♪♪
-Welcome to "City Inside/Out".
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
State and local leaders are scrambling to respond
to a flurry of orders from the White House
to crack down on illegal immigration.
President Trump has signed more than a dozen
executive orders on immigration during his first days in office
but Washington State is pushing back.
-The rule of law matters.
-State Attorney General Nick Brown has
so far blocked Trump's order to end birthright citizenship,
an order Brown calls an attack on the U.S. Constitution.
-It's absurd. I mean, that's what it is.
And it is consistent with the fact
that we have a lawless president.
-I think we should cooperate
with the federal government on this issue.
-But some county officials want to let U.S. immigration officers
use their local jail cells to detain immigrants,
and they're questioning
our state's so-called sanctuary status.
-Let them in!
-Why should someone benefit
from entering this country illegally?
-What you are being paid for by our taxes is to do your job,
not to do the federal government's job.
-Advocates say it's illegal for jurisdictions in our state
to help the feds in that way,
and they're worried about rising anti-immigrant rhetoric.
-It's going to harm many people.
-What's the right answer for local leaders
to an international immigration challenge?
-What we are seeing in our communities
is that people are really scared.
-Our panel weighs in.
-The American public broadly supports what's going on.
-It's a conversation on immigration
next on "City Inside/Out".
♪♪
Welcome once again to "City Inside/Out"
here on Seattle Channel. I'm Brian Callanan.
I'm joined by two guests
who can provide some more insight
on our current immigration situation.
Vanessa Torres Hernández is the integrated advocacy director
for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington,
the ACLU of Washington.
Thanks a lot for being here, Vanessa.
-Thank you.
-Also, we have with us Ira Mehlman, media director
for the Federation for American Immigration Reform or FAIR.
Ira, good to see you again. -Good to be back. Thank you.
-Let's do this. Vanessa, I wanted to start with you here.
As you know, President Trump,
about a month into his second term,
has already signed more than a dozen executive orders
relating to immigration. He wants to fast track
deportation of undocumented immigrants.
He wants to end birthright citizenship.
He suspended our country's asylum program.
Among a number of actions.
The ACLU nationally has filed a number
of lawsuits on these fronts.
But first, I want to look at this broadly.
What is the ACLU of Washington's position
on what President Trump is trying to do on immigration?
-The ACLU believes that President Trump's actions
on immigration are unlawful,
in excess of his legitimate power as the president,
and are deeply harmful to our neighbors
and broader communities,
and particularly with respect to the ACLU of Washington,
the executive orders that the president is issuing
are deeply inconsistent with Washington law
and Washington values.
And we see it as our role to ensure
that the president is complying with the Constitution,
statutes, the limitations that the law puts
on our immigration system and his own authority,
and that Washington continues to be able to live
consistent with its values
and pass legislation and enforce legislation
that protects our communities locally.
-Okay. Thank you for that.
And, Ira, maybe I can go to you here.
What made immigration such a top priority for the president
in its second term?
It really seems like it's top of the bill for him right now.
-It is, because we've had a lack of law
pertaining to immigration over the past four years.
We've had four years of absolute chaos,
people coming across the border in unprecedented numbers,
abuse of our asylum system, most of the people coming across
are not legitimate asylum seekers,
that there are people who are
taking advantage of the opportunity
to use it to get into the United States.
We have seen in the past administration abuse of parole
authority to let millions of people into the country
who are otherwise inadmissible. And what we've seen now
is that President Trump is trying to restore some sense
of common sense and law to a system that has run amok,
and the American public voted for it.
I mean, there's a reason he ran on it.
There's a reason that this was one of the key reasons he won.
It's because the American public have seen the impact
of uncontrolled immigration.
It affects national security.
It affects their communities.
It affects everything that's important to them.
And that's why we're making this revision now.
-Okay. I hear what you're saying.
Is he overstepping his bounds, though,
I think is the legal question at hand here.
And I wanted to get your take on that, too.
-Well, he is exercising the authority of the president.
He is complying -- we have laws on the books.
-Okay.
-Those laws were not being enforced
under the previous administration.
He is simply looking at the law and saying,
the law says we have to enforce our laws.
We have to secure our borders.
People who don't belong here have to be removed
from the United States.
And that's what he has done over the past months
since he's taken office.
-Okay. Let me get to a specific example here
that I can try to break down with you.
Ira, I'll start with you.
The U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, said recently
that the federal government would cut off funding
to any local jurisdiction
that interfered with federal law enforcement operations.
She says local police officers should be helping out ICE,
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
But we have a state law, "Keep Washington Working,"
that bans officers from asking people
about their immigration status,
from cooperating with ICE on non-criminal issues,
or holding people in jail that ICE needs help detaining.
Being in the U.S. illegally is a civil violation, not criminal.
So Seattle and King County and other jurisdictions
have sued the Department of Justice
over this withholding of funds.
I know that President Trump tried this move
against so-called sanctuary cities and states
in his first term, was stopped by the courts.
Why is he pushing this again?
-Well, it was stopped by the courts,
but never got the chance to appeal it,
because his administration ran out in 2021.
But you know, there's a difference between
obstruction and not actively participating.
-Okay. -State and local governments
do not have to actively participate.
But when the federal government says you have somebody
that we would like to take into custody,
or, you know, that we need access to certain places
and to be denied, that is obstruction.
And Pam Bondi and Tom Homan have made it very clear
that if you try to obstruct the enforcement
of federal immigration laws,
and the federal government does have supremacy in this area,
we are gonna go after you as well.
-I would firmly disagree with that statement.
-Please, what have you got? -First of all,
I think it's important that people understand
exactly what we mean
when we talk about federal immigration enforcement.
So immigration enforcement,
the process of removing people who are here
on civil immigration violations
or whose status may have lapsed in some way,
is the business of the federal government.
And I think we agree that under the Constitution,
and the courts have been very consistent about this,
states do not have to volunteer their resources
in order to participate in federal immigration.
The federal government cannot co-opt state resources
in order to effectuate its civil immigration aims.
Now, if the federal government has a warrant, for example,
for somebody's arrest or a criminal violation
or an order signed by the judge, under the Supremacy Clause,
Washington state and every other state in the country
would follow that.
But that's not actually what the Trump administration is saying.
What the administration is purporting to say
is that if you do not affirmatively volunteer,
based upon requests only issued by individual ICE agents,
as opposed to by judges, and with review,
that the state would somehow be penalized for that.
And the courts have considered that.
Now, that got appealed through multiple circuit courts
during the first Trump administration,
and overwhelmingly the Circuit Courts of Appeal found
that the states did not have to volunteer their resources.
So we're using this language of cooperation.
But really what we're talking about
is the federal government attempting to force the state
to conduct its own civil immigration enforcement,
which the state has no obligation to do, and in fact,
which Washington state has decided
is against our state interests.
-Yes. Specifically with the law that's on the books. Ira?
-Well, there were competing circuit court decisions on that.
It never got to the Supreme Court,
as I said, because the administration's time ran out.
-Okay.
-But, you know, just on logical basis,
why would, say, the Seattle Police Department
want to release somebody out onto the streets
whom they've arrested for other offenses
here in the United States --
-I feel like this is different, though.
We're talking about criminal cases there, right?
-I mean -- -Yes. -Okay.
-But, you know, even with civil cases,
it's not going to -- you're not going to get
the Seattle police involved in a civil case
unless they have them in custody for some other offense.
And this is where, you know,
there's been refusal in the past.
You arrest somebody,
you're prepared to turn them out onto the street,
and ICE steps up and says, "Wait a minute,
we want to remove this guy."
And the local police say,
"No, we're not going to hand the guy over.
You're going to have to go out and find him."
And by the way, Tom Homan has made it very clear
you're going to endanger other
illegal immigrants if you do that.
Because if they have to go out into the community
and find these people,
they're going to find other people
who are not on their radar scope.
-Tom Homan, the U.S. border czar.
Did you want to respond to that? -I do.
So, whenever a person is booked into custody
at any jail or any prison in the country,
their fingerprints are sent into national databases
that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE has access to.
Absolutely nothing stops ICE at that moment
from prioritizing, obtaining a warrant,
or another actual affirmative order of removal.
The reason that states and other jurisdictions
have not honored what's called "ICE detainers,"
meaning requests to hold people beyond the periods
of their detention is because
states have actually faced a significant amount
of liability for that.
New York City had a judgment issued against it,
you know, within, I think, the past few years
for $92 million for unlawfully detaining people based on
ICE detainers beyond the periods of their incarceration
when there was no constitutional grounds to hold them.
As a country, we can't just hold people in incarceration
because somebody wants them to be held in incarceration.
We have processes.
There are systems we can get warrants.
We can get actual orders that are signed by courts
and independent tribunals.
But that's not what -- you know,
what is being asked for here.
What is being asked for here is that we hold people
who have no legal basis to be held beyond that term.
-Okay. Thank you.
I'd like to move on, if I could, and talk about asylum seekers,
because I want to make sure we cover some ground here.
The president has suspended our country's asylum system.
The ACLU nationally has sued him on that front.
He's calling the migration of asylees into the U.S.,
quote, "An invasion at the southern border."
What's your response to that?
-I mean, the characterization of people
who are seeking freedom from persecution
as an invasion is absolutely false
and completely dehumanizing and contrary to everything
this country stands for.
The asylum system was set up in this country,
both in international human rights law,
which the United States adopted and ratified,
and in statute as a basis to evaluate the claims
and allow people to seek freedom from persecution
and protection of the United States.
And it was adopted after a fairly shameful history
of the United States and many other countries,
refusing to allow Jewish people
who were fleeing the Holocaust to seek protection
within the United States.
So we adopted asylum laws,
and in order to allow people to make their claim,
not necessarily to have their claim accepted
or to grant every person's claim of asylum,
but to give people a fair shot at making the claim.
To simply expel people without allowing them
to make that claim violates our statutes,
violates, you know, international human rights law,
and is something that, again,
the president cannot just do by executive order.
-Please, I just wanna make sure I got your point on this, Ira.
-Yeah. I mean, first of all,
the people who are making the asylum claims
are not leaving directly from the countries
where they claim to be persecuted.
In many cases, they have traveled through two, three,
four, ten different countries on their way to the United States.
The asylum system is not set up to find people
their ideal landing spot.
It is there to protect people who are truly being
persecuted at the hands of their government.
So once you're outside the borders of your country,
you are no longer in danger of persecution
at the hands of your government.
There should be an obligation to request asylum
in the first country that you come to.
And you know, if you've gone through many others,
there's no reason to accept the claims here.
You know, we live in a world of 8.2 billion people.
Everybody in the world cannot have their day
in an American courtroom.
And it takes years and years.
And that's exactly what has happened.
You've seen the abuse. Because you come here now,
if you make a claim, say, in New York City,
you're going to get a court date sometime in the 2030s.
-Right.
-And you're just playing the system at that point.
-Do you see the system as broken, the asylum system?
I've talked to some asylees here in our state as well,
down in Tukwila, at the Methodist Church there,
who've been there for some time and
they have court dates
that are many years down the line.
Can you help us with this thought
that the asylum system is broken?
-You know, I think that the way
that the government processes asylum claims
doesn't give people their day in court,
their chance to make their claim in an expedited fashion,
in a meaningful one.
And obviously, there are ways to fix that.
But simply closing down asylum claims
and punishing the people for the government's decisions
about how it resources and processes asylum claims
is, I think, incredibly cruel
and again, contrary to the law.
There might be legitimate, you know,
there might be legitimate debates to be had
about how we can more effectively
and efficiently process asylum claims.
But simply shutting down the asylum system
is not the answer here. -Okay.
I want to move on, if I could,
and talk about birthright citizenship.
Ira, I'll start with you here.
So President Trump wants to end birthright citizenship
in the U.S., where anyone born here becomes a citizen.
The state of Washington, along with other states,
have succeeded in putting this executive order on hold.
And I wanted to point this out.
It was a Reagan appointed U.S.
District Court judge here in Seattle,
not someone from the radical left
who said this is blatantly unconstitutional.
President Trump is ignoring the rule of law.
He's trying to get some political
and personal gain out of this.
What's your response to that decision,
which a few other district court judges have upheld as well?
-Well, he's not talking about abolishing
birthright citizenship.
He's talking about abolishing birthright citizenship
for the children of illegal immigrants.
-Okay. -And, you know --
the clause in the 14th amendment says all persons born
or naturalized in the United States
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States.
The Constitution doesn't go in for rhetorical flourishes.
Every word, every phrase is in there for a reason.
And that phrase,
"subject to the jurisdiction thereof," means something.
What does it mean to be subject to the jurisdiction
of the United States?
Does it mean, well, you're here and you have to
stop at the red lights like the rest of us?
Or does it mean something deeper than that?
And there is --
I mean, if you or I were to go live overseas,
there are still obligations we would have to this country.
We owe our allegiance to this country.
Someone who is here illegally,
or somebody who comes in the late stages of pregnancy
just with the intent of giving birth here,
they have no allegiance, no connection to the United States.
Once they are beyond the borders of the United States,
there is nothing that binds them to this country.
-First, I want to clear up a misconception,
which is that the executive order would both apply
to the children of undocumented immigrants
and also the children of documented immigrants
who are not lawful permanent residents.
So for folks who are here on long term work visas,
for example, folks who are here on long term student visas,
their children would be denied birthright citizenship as well.
So the idea that this is simply limited to folks
who do not have documented immigration status
or have not converted their immigration status
to a recognized form isn't true.
The other thing that I'll say is that
that subject to the jurisdiction thereof language,
the 14th amendment is in fact, clear.
It says every child born in the United States,
and that language about, subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
has already been interpreted by the courts
to mean something quite narrow, and was interpreted in 1898.
So for well over a hundred years,
and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 1980s,
to mean essentially only that it is applying
to the children of foreign diplomats,
who in fact do not have to follow the United States laws
and are not subject to punishment by the United States
for their noncompliance with federal law --
-Mm-hm. -Or with state law,
and to apply to you know, the children of invading armies,
none of which is even remotely applicable
to the children of people who are here
either with undocumented or documented immigration status.
And the president can't just change the meaning
of the Constitution,
the settled meaning of the Constitution
as interpreted by the courts,
and the statutes adopted by Congress to implement that,
just because he feels like it. -Okay. Ira?
-The 1898 case pertained to the children of people
who were here legally in the United States.
They were not eligible themselves to become citizens,
but they were legally present here in the United States.
And that's a very different, very different case.
And it was intended much more broadly, you know,
even Native Americans who were born in the United States
back then were not considered U.S. citizens.
It took an act of Congress, I believe, sometime in the 1920s,
to include them.
But it was the intent of the 14th amendment,
really, was to ensure
that the emancipated slaves were recognized
as citizens of the United States.
It was not intended as an invitation to anybody
who could come here and have a child,
that that child would be a citizen of the United States.
-Certainly something the courts will decide on.
Something quickly, please. -And I do think, though,
that if we look back at the history of the 14th amendment,
the people who wrote that language
and who wrote the statutes, absolutely understood
that it applied not just to Black Americans,
but also to Asian Americans and any other person who was here,
present in this country.
-All right let's let the courts figure that one out.
We have a lot more to cover here.
Ira, I did want to follow up on this one piece here.
Washington's AG, Nick Brown, was saying
after the birthright citizenship decision recently
that the president can't act like a king
if he wants to have this policy discussion about citizenship,
possibly amend the Constitution,
there's a process to do that,
involving elected leaders from Congress.
I just wanted to ask about this strategic approach,
this executive order.
The inflammatory language putting out a Valentine
from the White House social media department saying,
you know, "Roses are red/ Violets are blue,"
If you come here illegally, we'll deport you.
Some of that seems pretty inflammatory,
I think some of the president's critics would say.
Is this the right approach?
-Well, look, I mean, he is who he is,
and he gets people's attention. But, you know, this has nothing
to do with the birthright citizenship.
It is simply saying that we are going to enforce our laws,
that if you're here illegally,
we are not going to allow you to stay.
And, look, like any other enforcement of civil laws,
you have to send a clear signal
that there are going to be consequences to violating it.
You know, the Highway Patrol,
when they want to enforce the speed limit,
they don't pull over every speeder.
They pull over enough
and the rest of us get the message.
We are sending a clear signal now,
and we're seeing response.
We have slowed the trickle of people coming across the border
illegally to -- the other day it was less than 300 people.
We've gone from 11,000 a day about a year and a half ago,
down to about 300 people a day.
So this is something that can be controlled,
and the best way to do it is to send a clear message --
don't come because you're not going to be rewarded
for breaking our laws.
-Vanessa, I want to try to take the converse
of the question I asked Ira here,
because I think a lot of Trump supporters
would argue that this stance on immigration is
why he won the election.
A lot of polls show people are not okay with people
who immigrate here illegally.
You could argue they were asking for swift action
like these executive orders.
I just wanted to make sure I asked you to respond
to that kind of thinking. -So I'd say two things.
First, I think that the American people support a balanced
and humane reform of our immigration system.
The ACLU does as well.
We've supported comprehensive immigration reform
and other steps to make our processes and systems
work better and more effectively.
But that's a very different thing from tarring
all immigrant communities as invasion or criminals
and sowing fear and division within those communities.
Immigrants are our neighbors, our friends.
They are people who go to school with,
you know, to school with us and our children,
who work in our communities.
And it's important
for us to recognize the important contributions
that immigrants bring to the fabric of our communities.
And then the one other thing I'll just say quickly
is that if the president wants to open up
a meaningful public debate about the ways
in which we should change our immigration system,
simply issuing executive orders, ignoring the law,
and attempting to unilaterally change that is not the way
to do that, right?
We can go through Congress.
We can go through a public debate
that accounts for the broad array of interests here.
-Ira, briefly.
-We have to distinguish between immigrants
and illegal immigrants. -Okay.
And look, the illegal immigrants, for the most part,
are decent people who are just trying to get ahead here.
But, you know, we have to have limits
because it impacts everybody else in American society.
And just because you're an otherwise good person
doesn't mean that we should exempt you
from the consequences of the laws that you violated.
You know, you might cheat on your taxes,
but you're otherwise a good person.
The IRS is still going to come after you.
We have to have a system of laws.
We have to make it clear to people
that there're going to be consequences for violating it.
And we have to remember that these laws exist because
while we understand immigration always benefits immigrants,
nobody comes here unless it's in their interest to be here.
It does have an impact on people here,
and it's not always a good impact.
-Fair enough. I want to move on,
if I could briefly, to talk about DACA status,
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Ira, I'll start with you here.
These are people who are brought to this country
undocumented at a young age.
There are roughly 16,000 Dreamers,
as they are called in our state.
Dreamers have to reapply for work permits every two years,
have to avoid felonies or serious misdemeanors.
The president tried to rescind this program in his first term.
He was blocked by the courts.
And so far, Dreamers have not been targeted
in his second term.
What should the president be doing with Dreamers?
-Well, you know,
he has said that they're starting out
with getting rid of the really bad people.
They got a lot of work to do. But on the topic of DACA --
you have to remember President Obama
before he signed that, it wasn't even an executive order,
it was a memo.
Creating DACA -- on 22 occasions,
he said he didn't have the constitutional authority
to exempt an entire class of people
from enforcement of our immigration laws.
And we also have to start to look at who is
responsible for this.
Why are these people in the situation that they're in?
It was decisions made by their parents.
Every decision I make as a parent,
I understand is going to affect my children,
just as any other parent out there does.
And, you know, we have to start holding the people
who created this situation accountable,
not turning to the American public and saying,
this situation exists now you have to fix it.
-Vanessa, some thoughts on DACA.
-DACA recipients are teachers, firefighters,
members of our military, social workers,
business owners, people who contribute to our community
and for whom this is the only country
and only home they have ever known.
To expel those children from this country
at this stage in their lives would be unbearably cruel.
And again, is not something
that is supported by the American people.
The overwhelming majority of the American people
support a pathway towards lawful residence and citizenship
for DACA recipients.
And again, I think that is in recognition
that DACA recipients, like many immigrants,
contribute enormously to the American community
and that what's important is creating a space
for our neighbors to be here. -Thank you.
We need to wrap up the show. Vanessa, maybe some final thoughts
on where our immigration system is right now,
where it needs to go.
I know that the ACLU of Washington
deals with a lot of immigrants in our area.
If you can give us some insight on what they're dealing with
as we wrap up. -You know,
what we are seeing in our communities
is that people are really scared.
They are scared that they are going to be targeted.
They are scared that the laws
which are here to protect them will no longer be respected.
They are scared to engage with government services.
People are scared to send their children to school,
to go shopping, to go to work.
None of that serves us.
And that is not just folks who are undocumented.
That is also people who are here with lawful documentation.
Because of the broad brushes and strokes
that the administration has been targeting all immigrants with.
And I think what's important for us
as a state is to recommit to the values and recognition
that immigrants strongly strengthen Washington State's community,
that we are all better off
when we are able to build an inclusive community
for our neighbors,
and to recommit to those values regardless,
because those cannot be changed by fiat,
by the federal administration. -Thank you.
Ira, I'll let you have the last word here.
-I mean, first of all, there's no evidence
that anybody who is here legally is being targeted.
But, you know, what we have seen now is that there is a way
to ensure that we have a rational immigration policy,
that we can enforce our laws.
You know, we were told under the Biden administration
we can't control this.
It turns out, yes, we can control it,
and we're all better off if we have a system
that is governed by laws,
that allows the American public to have confidence
that the people that are coming into the country are,
number one, coming here lawfully,
number two, have been thoroughly vetted.
And we need to also start to look at
our legal immigration process to make sure
that we're taking people based on their individual merit,
regardless of where they come from,
but on individual merit, rather than a system that we now have,
which is essentially legalized nepotism,
where you have endless chain migration.
So there are many things that we can do.
But, you know, we've started the process now,
and as the polls show,
the American public broadly supports what's going on.
-All right. Thank you for this input.
And we will be right back.
What are people saying on social media
about the president's new approach
to illegal immigration?
One person writes --
Another person comments --
We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an email at contact@seattlechannel.org
or find us on social media.
Good to hear from those people.
And also very good to hear from you, Ira and Vanessa.
Thank you much for being involved in this,
and we will see you next time on "City Inside/Out".
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