Immigration in the Trump Era: A big picture conversation

and welcome to the Reconpopulation Agreement.

My name is Dan Shafer.

Thank you for joining us.

Donald Trump was sworn into office as the 47th president this week, and with that inauguration came a flurry of activity, perhaps most notably on the issue of immigration.

One report this week said Donald Trump characterized immigration as his number one issue in his 2024 campaign ahead of even the economy.

So today, we want to talk about immigration.

But part of having this conversation means separating some of the rhetoric from the reality and talk about what is actually happening on this issue.

Because on balance, this can all be pretty discombobulating.

So joining us today to help recombobulate and make sense of the issues our guests for this episode, Gabriella Parra and Kevin Laid, managing partners at the Laid and Parra Law Firm.

And joining me as co-host today is Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders, organizing for communities.

Gabriella, Kevin, and Angela.

Thank you so much for joining us today and welcome to the Reconpopulation Area.

Thank you, Dan.

Thank

you.

Thank you.

So before we jump into it here, I have to let our listeners know something.

And that is that Kevin and I are very good friends.

And so...

Part of the reason I wanted to have Gabriella and Angela here was first and foremost for their insight on this issue and for their thoughts today on the podcast, but also to be some adults in the room, because Kevin and I will go on a tangent and end up talking about Milwaukee buck's trades from the early 2000s

or having our millionth

argument about which decade has better music.

So it's really important that you guys are here so that we're not subjecting our listeners to Kevin's terrible takes on sports and pop culture.

I would like to be invited back to talk about both of those things at some

point.

I would like to hear that actually, especially the music one.

Maybe we'll save that for the very, very end of the podcast and just like, I don't know, cut Kevin off in time.

So anyway, good to have some, some adults in the room to put some guardrails on our conversation here.

So obviously this has been,

a pretty discombobulating week when it comes to the issue of immigration and with Donald Trump and the flurry of activity that he has taken on this issue.

And I want to talk about that.

But before I want to get into, you know, just the specifics of the last week and some of the details of what Donald Trump has been doing, I want to zoom out a little bit and kind of walk through a timeline of how we got here.

So when Donald Trump, you know, let's start from when

Donald Trump first took office in 2017 and the changes that he made then and then we can walk through to what changed in the Biden presidency and then what Trump is trying to change or do differently now.

So first, what did Donald Trump do first time around when he became president in 2017?

I mean,

I feel like it almost makes sense to zoom back even slightly further than that.

I think that

more so than a lot of other areas in life.

Immigration policy is something that's kind of developed in real time, like administration by administration.

And there's some broad trends, I think that have, you know, started to show themselves over the course of just the last like 20 years.

So if you look at it, Barack Obama, I think was a big, the George W. Bush administration had some increase in enforcement for sure from previous administrations.

And I think Obama really ramped it up to another level, particularly at the border.

And I think that showed kind of the American people had this, at least a tolerance or a desire for the system to really be like punitive in a sense, right?

Like focused on punishment, focused on expelling people from the country as the way people think about and interact with immigration kind of like in their lives, the way they think about it.

And I think the Trump administration really was just a continuation of a lot of the things that the Obama administration put into place.

Some of the biggest changes I think,

The way I would describe it is unpredictability, because the president has so much power over the immigration system.

Certainly some things can be changed by Congress, but the president's in charge of enforcement of the immigration laws, which means they can tell the police, immigration police, who to stop, when and why, how to hold those people, all those sorts of things.

And I think the Trump administration really leaned into that in a big way in viewing themselves as like...

a detention first and you know, using law enforcement to resolve these types of issues.

And then from my perspective, you know, the Biden administration tried to ramp that.

I would say that they didn't, they stopped the pace of the change in the Trump administration really, you know, and they didn't put a lot of new policies like that, but they didn't do a lot of stuff to roll it back either.

I would look at more as like treading water in a lot of ways, which is why it's kind of scary because I think a lot of the structures are in place for Trump coming in now in some sense to be able to kind of

pick up where he left off.

I don't know.

What do you think about that as a take?

Yeah, I think the only couple of things I would add is that just the hatefulness towards the immigrant community through a leader has been very difficult.

to witness.

I mean, you know, my both my parents are immigrants from Mexico.

I'm surrounded by the immigrant community day in and day out.

So, you know, I have heard the rhetoric or the policies from George Bush, then later on Obama, then later on, you know, we have Trump, but just the way that he portrays the immigrant community as rapists, as, you know, criminals.

has just, that's, I think, taken it to a very different level.

You know, the Biden came back and he was also enforcing his...

you know, bad in some policies and we'll get to those.

But he is enforcing these policies at a different level, and at least with some respect.

The other big change that I felt was the attack in the interior towards like immigrants that have been here for 10, 20, 30 years that have dedicated their whole life of building the United States.

And just Trump has not acknowledged any of that or tried to figure any solutions to try to get

people that have been here paying taxes for so long contributing to this country's growth in, you know, in e-commerce and agriculture, just not acknowledging any of that and just being everyone is an enforcement regardless of how long you've been in this country has just been very different than what I've experienced this before.

So when Trump talks about now, it's like when I was president last time, we were tough on the border.

We had a strong border, blah, blah, blah.

What policies really did he implement there at that time?

And are those things that Biden immediately removed when he became president in 2021?

Yeah, I can start the conversation, Kevin.

So a couple of things that really were frightening that he implemented, a big one that everybody hopefully recalls was separating parents from children at the border.

And so that was a big one that I just had never expected our country would ever do that and put kids in a foster care system.

That was a big one.

The other big one he implemented at the border was charging individuals federally criminal when they were coming into the country.

And also the issuance or the expansion of the expedited removal, which means that if you're coming into the country, if you're 14, have been here less than 14 days or 100 miles from, or sorry, less than two years or 100 miles from the border, he can issue an expedited removal without you having the right to see a judge.

And that was another big one that he implemented.

And the one, a last one I will touch on is,

the stay in Mexico to file your asylum claim, but the courts are in the US.

And somehow our asylum seekers had to figure out when their court was in the US and be allowed to come in from Mexico into the border towns, typically the immigration courts in the border towns, come to their hearing and then go back.

to Mexico.

And out of that, a lot of people didn't get the right to hear their claim because they didn't know when to go to their court hearing.

And a lot of them were issued, removed without due process.

Yeah, I feel like this, the, it's the remain in Mexico policy has been kind of one that's, you know, been in the news.

was something that Trump implemented.

And then what exactly did Biden do on that issue?

And how did that have an impact on the border, on people seeking to come here?

So the Biden administration did rescind the remain in Mexico policy shortly after he took office.

And essentially, you know, the enforcement at the border and the Biden administration has been such a weird, it's been such a weird four years because you had COVID at the beginning.

And so a big thing that they were doing was

what they call a Title 42 exception.

So just to like back it up, the whole thing is like the USA signs these agreements, these international agreements for humanitarian, to like half humanitarian protections for people who are seeking danger, right?

And then we have to like implement those protections into our legal system, right?

It's like the U.S., like all these ideas.

So we have all of these like very strong laws that were made like after World War II that give people these entitlements to be able to like, hey, if I'm going to get killed, you can't send me back to my home country, right?

And so what this, I feel like this whole project has been, is trying to peel back the strength of that.

And what Stephen Miller, who was a big policy guy in Trump the first time, and will be this time, he said he's trying to set up a series of unsolvable dilemmas, right?

And where it's like, you can't keep everybody out all the time through the legal process, but you can make it so 80% of the people no longer qualify.

And then after that, there's another hurdle they have to pass.

And then after that, there's another hurdle they have to pass.

And some of them are logistic.

like Gabby was saying, you're living in a border town, which is super dangerous.

You might be homeless, right, on the Mexican side, and you have to come back at four in the morning to a bridge to go across to talk to a judge who is going to see a thousand other people that day and is predisposed to not like you.

And that's just one thing, right?

And then there's a million different things that go on after that.

So like what the Biden administration did was to continue some of those things.

And I think the big one was this Title 42 thing, which was declaring a public health emergency as a way to defer some of those humanitarian obligations and took away some of the other ones, like the remaining Mexico and the family separation, well, Trump stopped doing the family separation stuff towards the end, but right.

And I think a lot of it was like optics, you know, as well, like what looked bad.

But I think if you look at the numbers, you know, under Biden, they're like going down.

And the reason they're going down is not like less people want to come here.

I mean, he has put in a bunch of very, like even beyond once you get across the border and you're actually presenting an asylum case, they're putting in all these little procedural things to make the cases harder to win.

They're like predisposing really cases from, I guess, people from some countries based on like political things and all sorts of other stuff, right?

So it is like, you're like, you're like trying to like throw a dart through a pinhole.

basically, uh, when you want to go through one of these cases, but there's so many people coming in that there are people who are still going to qualify, right?

And now you feel like with Trump, it's like they're going to keep pushing until they can reduce that number down to as tiny as possible.

Um, so that's kind of the big way I see the, the border, um, enforcement fitting into the whole

thing.

So what would be the best way to characterize?

Biden's approach to the border.

Cause the conservatives always talk about, Republicans always talk about just just, okay, this is open borders, right?

And so we're going to close the border.

We're going to do this, but that's just like a very simple rhetorical argument.

So what's the reality of, of what exactly is happening here?

Because, and I try to follow this stuff.

And again, it's, it's, it's complicated.

It's discombobulating all that.

It just seems like Biden and the Democrats have not had a very coherent vision.

For what they've wanted there, it seems like they just kind of bounce from thing to thing.

Is that a fair way to characterize it or is there something else going on there?

I

think there is a couple of things that...

In terms of Biden that was implemented to try to limit the amount of people that showed up at the border unlawfully, right?

So we had, you know, the being able to get parole from four countries with typically these four countries, people are fleeing from their government because they're fearing persecution, which is Venezuela, Cuba.

Haiti and um, Micaragua, right?

So he implemented a parole program being look, yeah, don't cross all these different countries undocumented.

We want to first process you fingerprint you do all those background checks and then make sure that we're allowed to bring you in, right?

And so that was a good program that he I think it

In practice, it was harder because it was 30,000 only.

There was more applicants that, you know, then they would issue, they would randomly select 15,000 and then they would do 15 downs that first come, first serve.

So it was still, they had issues, but at least it controlled who was coming into the United States.

The other big program, which, you know, has this issues as well, but it was through CBP one where you would, you know, do an appointment.

Is this that

app that has been

in the news this week?

Yeah,

okay.

So you would do an appointment and so CBP officers would be prepared to process you instead of whole caravan coming in and everyone not knowing what to do with, you know, 5,000 people showing up.

And so it was people were waiting for their appointment.

And then when they were given their appointment, they were showing up at the border and, you know, CBP officers were prepared to process them to ask for asylum.

And so, you know, there's, there's some things that I think they were trying to make sure that people that were coming in were screened instead of like everyone showing up and there's no protection, you know, at the border in terms of processing people.

So I think those were all.

good programs that have ended Thursday that Trump took office.

Yeah, I feel like it was like two things.

I mean, three things.

The normal thing is to try not to talk about it publicly at all as much as possible, because they viewed it as a losing issue that they had to run away from.

I know I'm not here to weigh in on politics, but that's really the way I see it.

The other thing is there are two things where they wanted to create additional lawful pathways that didn't exist to have a more as gabby was saying controlled and orderly process for people who were going to come in presumably undocumented otherwise, you know, so it's like, like, don't pay the smuggler, you know, do it this way.

And then it's like kind of a win-win, right?

You can come in and present your silent claim.

But the other thing you try to do is to kind of rescind like to disincentivize other types of stuff like unlawful crossings.

Like I was talking about like

you put in a bunch of new rules where it's like if people came in after a certain day, just jumping across the border or whatever, then like they can't really do their silent claims anymore for the most part.

It's just shut the door, right?

So they're really trying like a push and pull thing.

And like, I kind of get it.

You know what I mean?

Like I kind of see what they're trying to do in terms of having both a carrot and a stick.

But the problem is it's just, it's half measures.

It's not a systemic thing that really makes an impact that changes people's behavior.

And it's like, yeah, I'll be saying 30,000 people,

How many people want to come into the United States?

They're apprehending like 200,000 people at the border a month for a while a couple of years ago.

So like that's just not going to satisfy it.

So then what happens is, you know, then only the rich people get to do it or like the smugglers figure out a way that they can like make money off of it.

And then the whole thing just kind of spirals down.

And then, and of course, the public doesn't know about this and they don't really care either.

Right.

So there's no popular support for this type of stuff.

And now it's just gone.

And like what could have been a good idea?

It's just a classic example.

What could have been a good idea is just, it's like it was never even here.

So we're back to square one.

Great.

Oh,

we haven't even gotten close to the depressing stuff.

Oh yeah.

We haven't talked about that.

Angela, did you have, did you have thoughts on the, the really optimistic stuff that Kevin was talking

about there?

I was like writing.

I was like, there's so many things.

I know we're going to get into this in a bit, but my brain goes a lot to locally and whatnot.

And some of the rhetoric, right?

Because I feel that while we're on the topic, Democrats, if they would have actually stood up and actually had a plan years in advance, maybe we wouldn't be here right now.

And this is what happens when Democrats are inactive, right?

you know, if you are, you know, silent and passive, you are complicit and you're actively propping up an institution and a structure that is actually harming people.

And as many times as I've seen friends, colleagues, organizers, loved ones really try to sound that alarm.

It's been really disheartening to know that Democrats and this is

one of many issues, kind of put that on the back burner for the sake of trying to win.

And guess what?

They're not even winning.

So while we're on the topic of Democrats, but it's interesting because I think that there's a lot of fear.

I've talked to a lot of folks and people feel scared.

And also at the same time, people are like, well,

What is the status?

There's lawsuits.

Yes, people are preparing and I'm glad that there's a lot of like know your rights trainings because you have to be prepared now.

And I know meetings are happening over the weekend, but also at the same time, it's just like.

We can't keep, you know, holding on to this and watching every second.

I think for the sake of all of our wellness and mental health and loved ones and friends.

So it's like, what is this balance of like preparing, but then also not preemptively spiraling and understanding where we are, but that there is a, there's legal challenges as well.

Yeah, I mean I you know I can get us started on the on the on that conversation and you know the biggest thing that happens is the fear that the community has because they don't understand the system and how it plays out right the president can sign as many executive orders as he wants but that doesn't mean those all gonna get implemented and the big thing with this administration is putting fear

to an immigrant community that's already vulnerable and doesn't understand the American court system.

And so here you are in a situation where, you know, Kevin and I and our whole team at Layton Power had to spend countless hours this week just reassuring clients that they needed to stay calm and that they needed to wait.

People were already saying like, there's raids over here.

There's raids over here.

And I'm

like, there is no raids yet, you know, especially.

So it's like, I think the biggest thing with

with the community we're dealing with is that they don't understand our court system.

And they're afraid.

They're afraid of what's saying in the news.

And sometimes the news articles don't know how to report on the immigration or what's going on, right?

So the biggest thing, I did a video earlier to my immigrant community.

And the biggest thing I said, y'all got to calm down.

I know

this is tough.

But if we're all panicking 24 seven, then it makes, you know, that makes everyone's job harder, right?

The advocates that are fighting.

Um, and, and so the kids that they have in their home, right?

And so it's

like, we

need to calm down and we need to understand that, um, it has to go through a legal process.

And you have some amazing advocates and litigators that have been preparing for Trump since he took office.

I mean, the ACLU dropped their lawsuit.

You know, the states dropped their lawsuits.

So it's like, I tell clients, just calm down.

If there is something you need to panic about, I will be the first one to blast it everywhere so that you know that you need to be worried about this.

But in the meantime, we need to understand that these people want to scare you so that you willingly just leave the country or remain

in

hiding and you cannot allow that to happen.

So right now, just make sure that the,

Whatever you're watching knows or understands immigration law and follow those immigration attorneys or news outlets that really know how to report on this issue and stay calm.

Well, I'm gonna have to send every article I get about the Trump administration to you first so that you can

tell me whether or not I

should panic about it.

So let's just unpack some of the things that have happened over the past week here.

So Donald Trump is sworn in on Monday.

He makes a number of executive actions on the topic of immigration.

I think probably the headline issue for all of that is his going after birthright citizenship.

Uh, which to me seems blatantly unconstitutional, uh, blatantly violating the 14th amendment.

Um, what, what exactly is he trying to do here?

And, and I think there was, you know, some news, uh, at kind of at the local level and, and in lower courts,

uh,

Tony Evers and Josh Call joined a lawsuit with a number of states, uh, challenging this.

And I think there was a Reagan appointed judge, uh, in Washington state, I want to say, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, who.

put a hold on this on this order So just help me make sense of what exactly this this headline issue on birthright citizenship What are they trying to do and what do you expect to unfold here in the coming days and weeks?

Yeah You know, it's funny I remember on election night 20 right towards the end of Trump's first term

because when they started talking about birthright citizenship you know it's like they've been in office they were starting to work on all this stuff and it kind of felt like to me that's sort of the ultimate end goal fantasy for people whose number one goal is to restrict immigration and to see them come out of the gate and try to attempt it in the way they're doing it really tells you a lot I think about where what this administration's goals are actually going to be for trying to do a lot of this stuff and I think with it so what they what

What the order said is in 30 days, so it's gonna be like February 19th or something like that, they're gonna order that they stop issuing social security numbers and US passports to children of people who are undocumented and also people who are here on like temporary visas and things like that, like tourist visas or work visas or things like that.

And so-

Children born in

this

country, to be

clear.

born

in this

country right and of course America actually one of the few countries in the world that has birthright citizenship which is just you're born on the soil and you're automatically a United States citizen.

So you know what we're talking about here is creating an entire class of people that are born in the United States as undocumented people.

They're born in the United States without the ability to work illegally, without the ability to travel,

without the ability to get federal student loans, without the ability to get driver's licenses, effective immediately.

I don't know, I don't have a sense of what the numbers would be for this, but you know, you're talking, we have an, I'm sure we have an all-time high undocumented population in this country.

You're talking about immediately creating a new class of American, a type of American that has never existed before, an American who was born in this country without rights.

And that is very, very, very hard for me to really wrap my mind around and understand even what the implications like short, medium, long-term are, but it just feels like it would be a shift into a different country to me.

And I honestly don't think I'm overstating it.

So, okay, I'm glad you brought up like the 14th Amendment because this is really just the space that I've been sitting in literally since Trump got reelected.

understanding that the 14th Amendment touches a lot of things.

It touches a lot of communities.

And I'm not the only one, but some folks are thinking, okay, understanding the 14th Amendment, reconstruction, enslaved folks, their children are now citizens.

Some people are thinking,

They're coming after, you know, people think immigration, people's immediate thought is Mexicans, you know, the Mexican border.

We're not talking about immigrants from Canada.

We're not talking about that, right?

And so people are starting to think, if they can do this to folks from Mexico and Mexican immigrants, what other communities could they be potentially trying to come after next?

Am I overly paranoid for that analysis?

I

did not make that

connection man with the 14th amendment and because I was totally wrong when I said this is a new type of America and it's not.

There was a group of people in America before it were born without rights and that is just blowing my mind actually right now and putting that together.

I'm sorry Gabby go ahead.

No I was gonna say Angela wow I

you know maybe right you don't know with this administration what they what the real plans are but I will say this like let's remember that immigration is also a black issue we have

a lot of

black immigrants um especially I think I've seen it a lot more um in the last few years with the increase of Haitians with the increase of you know we have a lot of Afro um Latinos as well so I think that it it needs to be also seen as an issue from different communities I know typically people

people say, you know, Mexican or Latin America.

But again, we have high numbers of immigration coming from other African countries, right?

So it's a black issue as well.

One of the big things I think I would add to the reflection that Kevin said about birthright citizenship.

I mean, as a, you know, someone that grew up with immigrant parents, that has always been an issue.

Like I've heard it since I was like a nine year old, my mom being like, they want to remove your citizenship.

They want to remove your citizenship.

So it's always been an issue.

I think why, as I was reflecting, I was reflecting on what a difference it is now with the Latinos who were nine, seven, eight years old.

Now we're of age.

We're starting to be in positions of power.

We're starting to grow.

And so it's like now that we're starting to have our influence in elections, in the economy, you want to restrict this because half of the immigrants are from Latin America.

So you want to start restricting this ability for Latinos to be able to be in these possessions of power.

And so it goes beyond just, you know, all the violations and acts that you know, you won't be able to have.

But it's also removing us from these spaces now that we're coming of age, where a lot of my Latino fellow Latinos of my age are starting to be in running for Congress, running,

you

know, doing all these different things that it took a while for us to get there.

So that's what I was reflecting as I was

You know, they want to remove us from these positions.

And so a good way to do that is if you don't have access to these spaces, that's another way to get rid of us, right?

So that was another reflection as I was thinking about the passage of birthright citizenship.

That's a powerful point.

Thank

you.

The one thing I don't know is how likely do they think this is to succeed?

Because it's obviously a huge tone setter.

It's just like a shot across the bow because like

If they're going for that publicly already day one, nothing else is going to be more surprising than that to me or like can go further than this.

And so obviously got like stopped in day one in the courts and it's going to take probably years now to go up and go through it.

I'm just wondering if they think this is actually going to happen or if they, if they don't, you know, and I honestly don't, I honestly don't know.

I don't really have a prediction right now.

Well, and this just to,

take a little bit of a political opinion on this one, that it just seems like what, when Republicans take off as Trump in particular, he's just going to do things and then see if it works.

And then maybe

and

try to, you know, instead of,

I mean, normally I would use the phrase to just do something and then ask for forgiveness, but Trump's not doing that either.

So, but, you know, and I think the opposite is the Democrats just waiting to, oh, we need to hear back from the parliamentarian.

This can't upset the norms

and

all of these different types of things.

And just like the opposite of that is we have Trump and Republicans trying to bulldoze the constitution on day one of his second term.

So beyond that, which obviously,

Immensely concerning, what are some of the other actions from the past few days that have stood out to you that could really have an impact on people living in Milwaukee, people living in Wisconsin?

Yeah, one of the biggest ones that I really sat back and I was like, no way, was his command.

to, well, there's a couple, but one was his command that, um, ICE officers should make an effort to detain individuals that are already in court proceedings.

That one, like, and that they should fight their case detain.

So just to

give you a

background, typically when someone gets detained or if they're at the border, they eventually get released, whether on their own recognizes, whether they pay a bond.

Um, and then they just get to fight their case.

Um,

Released and you know for various reasons.

That's the best way right access to evidence access to the client your attorney The

due

process rights that people The importance of being able to have all these different access that you wouldn't get if you were detained and so one of the things that he instructed was that Ice agents should evaluate cases and even if they have just pending

cases without having violated their conditions because they get conditions when they get released, right?

Don't get into trouble.

Just like parole or when you released on bond, don't get into trouble.

So now they put do not work unlawfully.

So like before they put that but whatever.

And so now it's like this idea that you have all these individuals that have been released waiting for their asylum claim or waiting for to finish their case with an immigration judge who has who have not committed or violated

any of their conditions, now you have a president instructing the ICE officers to detain those individuals and force them to fight their case detain.

So that on top of all these other raids he wants them to do, plus the lack of resources, the lack of bad space that actually exists.

And so it's like that one was a little shocker for me when I was reviewing the different changes.

And these court cases take so long too, right?

I mean, I think it's, I think that's part of the thing that, you know, Kevin has told me about a little bit.

It's just that the backlog that exists in some of these cases, it's not like these are, this is an expedited process or anything like that.

So does this, you know, one of the things that we always hear about about immigration is crime, which is another narrative that we could perhaps unpack.

But like if people are focused on,

focusing their attention on this kind of like across the board type of action that you're discussing here.

Does that take away from their ability to actually focus on people who are engaging in criminal behavior?

Yeah.

I mean, I think it does, right?

Because if you don't have any bed space to put individuals, like you can't detain them.

And so I think it's sad.

I think it's also like just the resources.

We just don't have the resources.

Right now, we only have one detained judge, and that serves and reviews all detained cases.

Are you going to move?

all the other judges into detain court.

And there's a lot of these individuals, like I said, going back to they haven't committed any crimes.

They were released, they presented themselves at the border, like our law say, present yourself at the border, they were released, they're being processed.

And to detain them and the kids, right, because kids were also part of that.

It's just

that, you know, it's unrealistic, but you're putting fear on all these individuals and can it happen?

You know, maybe it can because there's instructions now that ICE officers have.

So now they're empowered to do that.

Is there ways we can be like, fight it with a judge, of course.

But again, you just wasted a bunch of resources for an individual that didn't deserve to be detained because he had already, he or she had already been processed.

So that gets into another of the issues that I wanted to talk about was just this issue of like,

legal versus illegal immigration, right?

So what you're talking about there is somebody who's trying to go through the proper channels and trying to do it legally.

Like, you know, you always hear this pushback, well, why aren't, you know, why don't people come here legally, right?

So what are the ways that people can come here legally?

And how does the campaign or the media rhetoric on this issue often miss the reality of what you're seeing, you know, with the clients that you're working with and all of that.

I always like doing the history lesson of the different processes.

So I'll tee this one up.

So the way that you get like, the way I tell my clients to think about it is the American immigration system is a series of what benefits you can unlock, right?

And as US citizens, we don't think about benefits that we have because there we have them when we're born.

Things like being able to work, things like being able to drive a car legally, things like being able to travel outside the country, maybe getting help from the government if you're having a tough time, all those types of things.

And so as people go through their process, you know, if you have no status, you can't do any of those things, right?

And as you go through your process, you might get like a work permit and then maybe you'll get like a green car later on, which will let you do more of those things and eventually become a U.S.

citizen, right?

So that's kind of

like the process that people want to go through.

And the way our system is set up is this.

The most number one way people get status is through family, right?

Through being married to a U.S.

citizen or, you know, maybe like you get status and then you can file to bring your kids over or something like that.

That's probably like 70% of it right there.

Then beyond that, there's-

Of legal immigration.

Yes.

The legal immigration, right?

Yeah.

Then beyond that, there are these other paths that are like-

employment base pieces.

There's also things like humanitarian claims, like people have been victims of crime or domestic violence, cooperated with law enforcement, human trafficking victims, things like that.

And then there's also like asylum and deportation defense work like Gabby does, which is, you know, going into court and arguing about why people are in danger to go back, having to go back home.

And so the system is sort of set up, you can kind of like, if you think about it, it's kind of set up to like for different policy goals, like family unification is important, right?

Like our society is better if the family unit is

Right, that's kind of like you can see that's how the mindset and then these these labor cases right like it's you know We want our economy to be competitive We want to get the best minds in the world here and then the humanitarian one certain people deserve protection Immigration status can be a part of that for the empowering people right and then and then like asylum kind of a similar thing like that So that's the broad framework.

So the way I'd say it's like all laid out like this at the beginning

And then what happens is they chip away and each one of those things just gets harder basically year over year as time goes on because more people want to pass through the system.

And so the system is restricted more and more and more in the flow.

And then it just creates these big insane backlogs.

Like for example, Gabby, let's say I was your brother and let's say you were a US citizen and I was a Mexican living in Mexico and you wanted to bring me to the United States.

file papers for me today to do that.

How long would it take for me to come?

20 years.

More than 20 years, right?

And so what that does, when these backlogs, which are structural problem, you have a pathway available, but it's not actually usable, then that incentivizes people to break the law, right?

And so that is the fundamental issue with the system.

It's designed in a way that kind of makes sense, but

Like you look at this Lake and Riley Act stuff going or whatever, it's just the laws that get passed are based on emotional reactions to things.

And the people writing them don't even really understand what's in them, but they're supposed to just like send a message about being tough or doing this or doing that.

Then all of a sudden it jumbles the system up, it makes it less efficient and then people choose to bypass it more and more over time.

I would like to add something in terms of asylum.

People showing up at the border, that is due following the law.

But we have to remember that as someone that represents a lot of Latin American individuals, a lot of the root causes for people fleeing their home country are gangs and cartels.

who homegrown these gangs the United States did?

And then they deported them all to Latin America.

And now you have a bunch of individuals that are terrorized by these gangs coming and fleeing their home country because their government cannot control the gangs there.

And so the government or our US laws, asylum laws say, hey, if you fear your country and your government is not protecting you, show up to our border and we will do you a process so that we

We can see if we can protect you under asylum.

And that is what individuals are doing.

Again, cartels.

Who's the one that's consuming the drugs?

It's not Mexico.

It is the US.

And so, again, these are root causes that start in the US and that trickle down to these countries and where governments aren't able to protect their citizens.

So they flee to the United States following the law and showing up at the border requesting asylum, which is, again, the lawful way to do it.

You can't request asylum from Guatemala.

Right.

Also, the US oil embargo on Venezuela causing inflation to skyrocket, plummeting the cost of living, and then that forces the underclass out first.

These people come up here and they're the people with the least education who are already from the depths of the bottom part of their own society.

Then they get scapegoated as these dirty dangerous immigrants who are coming in.

all this big feedback loop for a lot of time.

I mean, it's very complicated, right?

But it's unquestionable that it's like a feedback loop in many

ways.

Right.

But the complexity that you guys are outlining here just totally does not match the conversation that we hear most of the time about immigration.

I think, you know, especially from the right, it comes as a way of saying, you know, that people are trying to come here and exploit the system and get giveaways and all of that.

When you hear that type of rhetoric and you see the reality in the work that you do, how do you bridge that conversation?

How do you make sense of that in what you're doing on a day-to-day basis?

I think I was telling Kevin this because I was reflecting on this.

I think the problem with the US is that we're grown to believe that there is only limited resources

and that it's either them or us who gets these resources.

And so I think a lot of the time I got to approach it from that way, because just like the divide in Latinos now on immigration, because you have this where you have like, and I don't think the media cover this at all, where you have, why are some Latinos or quite a few Latinos against, you know, or secure.

voting to secure voters, voting for Trump.

And one of the big things we have to realize is that you have these.

Dividing between like you have newcomers who are able to, for example, get this work permit because they're applying for asylum and then you have long immigrants being like, I've been here for a long time.

How come I don't have a work permit?

And, you know, and then you have like, then you have the Republicans being like, yeah, right?

They're stealing your resources.

You've been here longer.

And now the Trump administration or not the Trump, the Biden administration is just giving out work permits to everybody and giving out state.

health insurance.

And now you have this divide among Latinos on immigration because they're believing this rhetoric.

And it really, I think the root of it all is because the United States has made us to believe that there's only a few resources and only and if it's either them or us to get the resources, but you got to choose.

And so now we have this mentality.

Well, I don't want

I want to close the borders, not give individuals access to their ability to see if they qualify for asylum because they fear persecution because that means then I'm not going to get something or they're going to steal my job or they're going to get public benefits and I'm not going to get those.

So I think that's a big conversation that I've had in advocating.

In Latinos and just in general, when people are afraid of immigrants, I'm like, look,

It's not, there's enough abundance for everyone.

There's enough jobs.

I bet you don't wanna do those jobs.

You don't, don't say you do because then there wouldn't be such a high number of immigrants doing these jobs because no one else wants to.

So it's like, we gotta go back and understand that there is enough resources for everyone.

And I think the Republicans have done a very good job being this us versus them mentality.

Yeah, they talk about it like it's a zero-sum game, right?

And I think Angela and I talked about this in a podcast we did right after the election.

I'm just talking about how some people are out there.

It's just like, well, I'm not getting help from my government, but people who are crossing the border, these people who are coming here illegally, they're getting help that I'm not getting.

And I think that has kind of permeated a lot of these conversations in a lot of ways.

And I couldn't agree more.

It's just like we are...

We have the resources to be able to take care of everybody.

It's, it's not like a either or type of situation.

Um, if I could add to that also, just like, I've been thinking about it more and more like this, like people get mad at undocumented immigrants being in their country because they feel like it's like their house or something or like whatever, right?

Like it's like, it's like an invasion.

It's like they're violating these rules of my, whatever my sanctity, my security, but like immigration, it just.

It's not that it's like a person who's making a choice to come in, right?

It's that there's so many things behind.

To be a person who's walking through the freaking desert for three days or whatever, there's so much that happens before.

That is like personal to that person's life, but also these huge economic factors.

One of the biggest things that's going to drive migration in the next couple of decades is climate change and no one's talking about that because

it's going

to help your agricultural patterns and stuff and tourism and things.

It's going to push poor people to make a calculation about the quality of life versus the risk that they're going to take on this that they can get.

And if their quality of life gets low enough and the difference up here is big enough, then that's when people start to make that jump.

And I feel like immigration is one of those things that a lot of social problems get dumped into.

I think it's like the education system or the criminal justice system, right?

Or it's like, why is there a bad outcome?

Why is this?

And it's easiest just to point at the end, right?

Well, it's like, why is this undocumented guy here, right?

And so it's very easy to give people just to get mad at the end thing, as opposed to thinking about the root causes.

And it's unfortunate because the Democrats won't do that either, right

now.

Right.

And this is a conversation I have all the time.

It was just like, it's so many of these, the problems that we're seeing in this country are the results of things that are downstream.

And we're not focusing on addressing the upstream problems that we are dealing with, that average regular people are dealing with downstream.

We don't have a ton more time, but I want to get into a couple other things here.

I want to talk about just how this is impacting people on a local level.

So there was this story a couple of weeks ago in Milwaukee where the member of the Milwaukee Common Council raised a bunch of concerns about an ICE facility coming in.

to District 9.

What exactly happened with all of that?

And what is happening next on that issue?

Yeah, so I mean, we do have an ICE facility already.

It's downtown on NAP Street.

And so it used to be combined with ICE and USCIS, which is the immigration agency that processes affirmative applications.

And so what happened was USCIS now moved down to Wisconsin Avenue.

And so ICE is really trying to locate somewhere else and move out of that building.

So they're already in Milwaukee.

They're on NAP Street.

That's what's you know, so they they are choosing that area and they ask for permits so that they can build a Sally port and So that's where the issue is but I think you know, I don't know.

I might be I might be someone that I don't I don't know if this is the biggest issue I want to fight for because let me I'm just giving you my opinion as an immigration attorney They were thinking of doing it in the middle of nowhere in the nominee falls or walk us out, which is a little more

I'm a burial racist

for

immigrant communities, so I don't know if I want them in a more private, more rural area versus in Milwaukee where I'm closer to them where there's more immigration attorneys where we can just drive up there.

But that was a whole issue.

I definitely am glad, I guess, that you see the Milwaukee community really standing behind the immigrant community and really sending a message to our immigrant community.

So that made me happy.

But again, we already have an ICE facility.

It's on NAP Street.

They're just trying to relocate to a different building.

I think when I talk to some organizers, folks, there is a lot of intersecting, I think, conversations to, given the location, kind of like in the 9th Aldermanic District, largely, you know, brown deer-ish type of area heavily makes, but also a large black population as well.

And so what does it look like?

You know, if you have this facility, this also brings in feds to your backyard.

And we know that that's not just going to necessarily be contained to the building itself.

that I think is something that I want to lift up of, you know, why black residents in that area should also care about that.

But then also, I think that it's setting the tone locally as well.

If people weren't freaked out about Trump's election, people are seeing the action taking place in their own backyards, in their own city.

And I think that's dangerous.

And I think it's another scare tactic.

Something that I think is interesting, the mayor recently sat down and did an interview, and he talked

about immigration and kind of answered some questions.

And he very much kind of took like a, well, we're kind of just wait and see kind of approach.

Well, we don't know if anything, you know, we can't stop federal policy.

Is that accurate?

I mean, I think one, I think there's practical, you know, whether you can stop it or not, I think that's important.

But I also thought it was a missed opportunity for him to also like be firm and actually stand with immigrants.

But if you can kind of just clarify like,

What is the process in Milwaukee?

Can it be stopped?

And if not, how can we still balance out and say, we still don't want this here and we're going to protect our community members?

Yeah.

It's

really

interesting, but I don't totally know if I know the answer.

I'll just start talking and

see if

something.

Yeah.

So.

You know, that is very interesting because immigration law is obviously federal, right?

In

terms

of, I shouldn't say obviously, immigration law is federal in the sense that the law is the same, more or less throughout the entire country.

The people who enforce immigration laws are federal employees and not state or local employees, right?

They have different bosses, it's a different structure.

So.

There's not like they can't like pass a law giving people work permits or something like that.

You know what I mean?

Like on the local level that would be cool.

I mean on the state level there is legislative stuff you can do.

That's like the interaction with some of these federal laws and state laws.

The big example would be giving people driver's licenses or whatever which people had until 2008 or so and then the legislator took it away, right?

On the local level it's like

I mean, sanctuary cities, I feel like, is a term that is confusing, even

to me

sometimes, as an immigration attorney.

So it's not always clear what is meant by that.

But I think there are some law enforcement policies, which I would imagine that the mayor has a hand in in terms of what types of communications are made to ICE when certain individuals come to police attention and things like that.

But beyond

that, I'm not fully.

The mayor's hands aren't completely tied, I think, is what

I'm.

I

don't know.

I mean, personally, I will say even his platform too.

But it sounds like even if it's just like the way he directs MPD and cooperation and things like that.

Yeah, there's you have you have the ability to decide not to cooperate with ICE.

Like

they can't come

after me.

I know Trump is going to want to

person or prosecute any official that doesn't enforce immigration laws.

We'll see how that goes.

But in the moment, like right now, it's a friendly cooperation.

So I think you really need to send a message out of your really committed to the immigrant community.

Like, I am not going to cooperate if they send me an email saying, Hey, we need to access this space.

We need to access your resources.

We need to access your people.

be that, no, you are not accessing my people.

So you can do something.

And, you know, so, so it's that cooperation.

How much cooperation are you willing to do with these ICE officers?

And if you're not willing to do a lot of cooperation and send that message out to the immigrant community, because they need to hear that.

It

seems like another

example of asking for permission versus asking for forgiveness.

Right.

So, yeah.

Anyway, Angela.

I was gonna say on the flip side, I think one of his arguments that he's making is he doesn't want to be, this is what I interpreted when I heard, is that he doesn't want to be so bold into, you know, say we're not cooperating because it would inadvertently make Milwaukee actually a bigger target.

So he's gonna try and kind of scale back and not be so vocal about it.

I don't know if that's the question if y'all want to weigh in on that I don't think that that's the right analysis quite frankly um and I think it's again kind of preemptively um submitting to something instead of actually standing up for your community members but I thought it was an interesting take and some would call devil's advocate

yeah I don't really know the political calculations involved I'll just note that I mean Trump accepted the nomination on the stage in our city not too long ago and now he's doing all this stuff and it's you know I mean

I think at a certain point, it's someone who wants to use power as a club against people.

And so you're going to put your hands over your head.

You're going to try to do something about it.

I mean, in either way.

I saw I saw officers are going to be doing rates either way.

I saw something to be in our community there.

That's their directive.

Like, so I don't know if they're really putting a target or not by remaining silent.

They're going to have to

do

it.

Right.

And I, during the Biden administration, I didn't feel that many rates like where people were calling me and they like rated a bunch of like 10, 15 people.

At the same time, I can't even remember just one time with me having to respond to that.

But during the Trump administration, I did have to respond to people.

that were rated.

And so

it's

like, it's, it's a directive, it's going to happen, right.

And so I don't know if staying neutral is really going to protect anyone.

But I would say

I think our government officials need to step up.

And if you really do care about the immigrant community and you really value what they have offered to Wisconsin, again, let's go back and remind individuals that they were essential workers during COVID-19.

Our clients were working 40 hours.

all the time, putting their selves at risk in these big populations when everyone else was told to stay at their home and our clients couldn't because their jobs were essential.

And so I think at this point, if you really want to say thank you for all that hard work that they did to lift the state of Wisconsin while we were closed during COVID, I think it's a good time for government officials to step up and be like, I support the immigrant community.

I will not collaborate with ICE if they ask me.

And I'm not going to you put our

Milwaukee resources or our state resources to help them detain our immigrant community.

That's such a great point.

We do have to start wrapping things up here in just a minute, but let's just end on this point here.

You mentioned some of the interactions that people might have with ICE.

What rights should people know about when interacting with ICE?

What are their individual rights?

Yeah.

Um, it's, it's a lot of it is challenging because I think what a lot of the way that ice does its enforcement is through like different types of like memorandums they write out and stuff like that.

And the rules are changing all of the time.

Like they just rescinded something where they can go into hospitals now or something like that, but like, will they actually do it in practice?

Yeah.

And part of it too, I think a big message is like the fear, right?

So I was looking up the statistics.

There was like, you know,

30 people detained at hospitals during Trump's first four years, which is not nothing, but it's like you hear it and then everyone's like, oh my God, I can't get medical treatment anymore, right?

So I feel like that's the fear that this stuff creates.

In terms of when individuals have interactions with law enforcement, I mean, you do have some protections based on privacy of your own home and different things like that, right?

It's like the door, it's a lot like when a police officer's coming to talk to you, you have a door between them, you don't want to open, you open the door, they can come in kind of thing, right?

I think the, if they,

ICE almost never has documents that would compel like a forcible entry to anything.

They just kind of show up and they anticipate that people are scared of them which they are and then that's how people kind of get

arrested.

A lot of

people would be too afraid to keep the door closed and like I totally understand that but that is the right that people do have.

Not incriminating yourself is always a good idea with any law enforcement agents so don't like talk about necessarily like where you're from or what your immigration status is.

If a, you know, a police officer pulls you over and asks you, why don't you have a driver's license?

You just say, I just don't have one, right?

So you don't need to go into explanations that can lead to more types of questions and things like that.

People do, you know, typically have the right to see a judge and to be able to evaluate their ability to fight a case, leave detention or stay in the country.

So it's very important not to sign anything until you have an attorney because sometimes they'll put a piece of paper in front of you that will waive the right to do those things.

What am I missing, Gabby?

No, I mean, I think you have them all.

The biggest one that you want to engrave in, you know, as an ally to the immigrant community is like, remain silent.

Remain silent.

Do not say you're undocumented.

And I know that in the moment, you're afraid and you're like, yeah, I came from like, Mexico 20 years ago.

I'm sorry.

And it's like, no, no, no, no.

So it's like, remain silent.

Get, you know, if ICE has a warrant to arrest you, they're going to arrest you.

You don't need to add to it.

A lot of the things with, with rates is that they will

take innocent bystanders.

If they went looking for someone and that person wasn't home, but they're like, Hey, what's your name?

Where are you from?

And then that person out of fear is like, Oh my God, I'm Mexican.

I'm undocumented.

Like, no, if don't say anything, because if they don't have a lot of the tensions that ICE makes by innocent bystanders, our own admissions from the individual.

So we got to practice, remain silent.

If they have a warrant for you, let them arrest you.

But if they don't, then what if they don't?

And then you run the risk that they arrest you because you told them you were undocumented.

So I think as allies that work with the immigrant community, we got to help our immigrant community and remind them that they got to stay quiet.

Don't talk to cops.

Always a good rule in my book.

All right.

Important stuff, guys.

There's so much to this conversation.

And perhaps there's another opportunity that we could sit down and talk about this stuff again, because I think it's going to be one of the main issues for this Trump second presidency.

And I think instead of what Democrats I think have done in a large part, we can't avoid the issue.

We got to talk about it.

We got to get through these things.

We got to figure out where we stand on this and where we are going forward.

So Gabriella, Kevin, Angela, thank you so much for having this conversation.

Unfortunately, we are out of time for Kevin's terrible takes on sports and pop culture.

We'll have to save that one for next

time.

I'll be waiting for the invite back.

Great to meet you, Angela.

You too.

Thank you so much.

Thanks

guys.