Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-12-04 Thursday

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Headlines for December 04, 2025; Will Hegseth Go? Defense Secretary Faces Anger from Congress over Boat Strikes, Signal Chat; Can a Deal Be Reached to End Russia’s War in Ukraine? Matt Duss on Latest Diplomatic Efforts; “Making America White Again”: Trump Further Restricts Immigration, Ramps Up ICE Raids; West African Asylum Seekers Find Safe Haven in NYC Volunteer-Run Kitchen

From New York, this is Democracy Now. The fear among the Somali community is real. This mall, if you come to, like, around noon, nobody's here. It is deserted. Every business is closed, and it has been like this for the last three days. Federal immigration agents have reportedly begun operations targeting the Somali community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area after President Trump repeatedly attacked Somalis, describing them as garbage. We'll speak with Omar Fata, the first Somali American to be elected to the Minnesota State Senate. Then to Trump's move to, quote, permanently pause migration from all third world countries, unquote.

We'll speak with Marad Ovalda of the New York Immigration Coalition about the new rules, as well as an anti-ice protest here in New York where protesters halted a potential ice raid by preventing agents from leaving a Manhattan parking lot. So while this operation was meant to inflict fear, chaos, and panic, New Yorkers stepped up and New Yorkers defended one another, making sure that no one was taken and disappeared from their communities and their families. Then to Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, as well as a Pentagon watchdog, report finding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked endangering troops by sharing sensitive information about U.S. strikes on Yemen in a signal group chat. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman. A bipartisan group of senators has interested. introduced a war powers resolution seeking to block the White House from launching an attack on Venezuela without congressional authorization after President Trump said a land attack will start very soon. The resolution was co-sponsored by Democratic senators Chuck Schumer, Tim Kaine, and Adam Schiff, along with Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, who wrote, quote, the American people do not want to be dragged into endless war with Venezuela without public debate or a vote. We ought to defend what the Constitution demands, deliberation before war, unquote.

In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro Wednesday confirmed he spoke by phone with President Trump about 10 days ago, calling the conversation a potential opening for diplomacy. I received a phone call and spoke with President Donald Trump. I can say that the conversation was in a respectful tone, and I can even say it was cordial between the U.S. President and the President of Venezuela. I add that if this call means there are steps towards a respectful dialogue between states, between countries, then welcome dialogue, welcome diplomacy, because we will always seek peace. The U.S. Navy commander overseeing the Pentagon's attempt,

on alleged drug boats is set to testify on Capitol Hill today. Admiral Frank M. Mitch Bradley will provide a classified briefing to select congressional lawmakers about the U.S. attacks on the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have condemned the strikes as murder. The Pentagon's Inspector General is set to release a report today on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's use of the widely available social media app signal to discuss U.S. air strikes in Yemen earlier this year. Two people familiar with the report's findings told news outlets Hegseth endangered U.S. troops and using signal to discuss the strikes with several other senior Trump administration officials. The chat, which included Hegseth's wife

and brother, was revealed when the Atlantic's editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to the Signal Group. Defense Secretary Heggseth refused to cooperate with the Inspector General, refusing to hand over his phone or sit for an interview. This comes as the New York Times is suing the Pentagon over its new press policy that requires media outlets to pledge not to gather information unless defense officials formally authorize its release. Earlier this year, reporters at the New York Times, along with a number of other media outlets, gave up their press passes rather than comply with the Pentagon's new policy. The Times argues in its lawsuit that the Pentagon's policy, quote, is exactly the type of speech and press restrictive

restrictive scheme that the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have recognized violates the First Amendment, unquote. Israeli forces have killed seven more Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in Israel's latest violation of the ceasefire that was declared nearly two months ago. Among the dead are five members of a single family, a middle-aged mother, father, their eldest son, and their two young children killed when Israel bombed their tent and Khan Yunus. The attack targeted the Almawesi evacuation zone, which Israel previously declared a safe area for displaced people. It followed funerals for Palestinians killed and strikes a day earlier. This is Sabar al-Sakhani, whose family members were killed and wounded in an Israeli attack on Gaza City Tuesday.

I lost my brother and my two nephews. My brother's wife and her daughter, are hospitalized and intensive care. We're asking you to stop the wars, for God's sake. Health officials in Gaza report 366 Palestinians have been killed and 938 injured by Israeli forces since the October 10th cease fire. Meanwhile, in southern Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians attended a mass wedding for 54 couples in the city of Han Yunus Tuesday. Organizers called called it an act of defiance against Israel's campaign of genocide against Palestinians. It is a message for the killers and criminals, whether Ben Gavir or Smotridge or Netanyahu, that our Palestinian people embrace life, cling to life and love life,

and that they will continue in their struggle and strife through this mass wedding in all forms of life. We will continue from the middle of the rubble, destruction, and death in the city, the city of Hamad to send a new message that we will rebuild this destroyed city. In Toronto, protesters interrupted speakers at a prominent debate series Wednesday evening after organizers invited four former senior Israeli politicians to a discussion about the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine without inviting a single Palestinian to the stage. The Monk Debates event featured former Israeli Prime Minister, Echud Olmert, former Foreign Minister Sipi Livni,

former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and former Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked. The Zionist dream is in danger. In a statement, protest organizers wrote quote, by putting these individuals on stage, unchallenged by any Palestinian voices, the monk debates is creating a sanitized academic veneer for genocide. The event manufactures consent for ongoing occupation, launderes reputations of officials implicated in war crimes, and rewrites reality by excluding Palestinians entirely, unquote. The Trump administration

deployed federal border patrol agents across immigrant community. in New Orleans Wednesday, calling it Operation Cataula Crunch. Greg Bovino, the senior border patrol official, who's been the face of President Trump's mass deportation campaign, was seen patrolling the city's French quarter. A New Orleans resident told the Associated Press, he watched agents arresting men outside a home improvement store. The Trump administration says it's seeking to arrest 5,000 people during the surge. It comes as immigration and customs agents have begun a mass arrest campaign in Minnesota,

targeting Somali American communities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. The raids follow a cabinet meeting on Tuesday in which Trump called Somali's garbage. Trump then doubled down on his racist rhetoric Wednesday at the White House. After headlines will go to Minneapolis to speak with Omar Fata, the first Somali-American and first Muslim to be elected to the Minnesota State Senate. Meanwhile, immigration advocates and lawyers contend that despite ISIS policy that agents shouldn't detain arrest or hold pregnant postpartum and nursing mothers, pregnant people are increasingly rounded up, deported, and detained. The ACLU is documented more than a dozen cases of pregnant women housed without proper medical care at the Stewart Detention Center in

Lumpkin, Georgia, and the ICE Processing Center in Louisiana. In one case, a woman was shackled while she miscarried. Another woman with a high-risk pregnancy was placed in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, here in New York City, the news outlet, the city, is reporting ICE agents arrested a Chinese father named Faye and his six-year-old son, Juan Xian. during an immigration check-in in Manhattan last week. The father was separated from his little boy and taken to an ICE jail in upstate New York. Advocates say nobody knows where Juan Chin, the little six-year-old, is being held. According to the deportation data project, the boy is part of a growing number of children arrested and detained by ICE.

This year, ICE arrested 151 children. Meanwhile, a new report by Amnesty International says immigrants held at the ice jail in Florida, known as alligator Alcatraz, were shackled inside a two-foot-high metal cage and left outside without water for up to a day at a time. The report also details, quote, unsanitary conditions, including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposed. to insects without protective measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water, and lack of privacy. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released more than 150 new photos and videos of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's private island in the Caribbean. The images show a room with a dentist's chair surrounded by masks, a bedroom, a

palm tree-lined swimming pool and several other living spaces. Democratic Congress member Robert Garcia, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said, quote, these new images are a disturbing look into the world of Jeffrey Epstein and his island. We're releasing these photos and videos to ensure public transparency in our investigation and to help piece together the full picture of Epstein's horrific crimes. We won't stop fighting until we deliver justice for the survivors, unquote. Meanwhile, Epstein's co-conspirator, Gillen Maxwell, who's currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, is planning to ask a court to release her. That's according to a letter filed at a federal court in Manhattan. Earlier this year, Maxwell was transferred from

a federal prison in Florida to a minimum security camp in Texas about a week after she spoke with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of President Trump's former lawyers. In Labor News, new reporting from the payroll processing firm ADP shows the U.S. economy lost 32,000 jobs last month, led by a drop in small business employment. Most industries laid off workers with net gains seen only in the hospitality and health care sectors. A year ago, the U.S. economy was adding about 200,000 jobs per month. Now it's had its first three-month decline since the 2020 recession. The Trump administration is seeking to slash fuel efficiency standards and acted under the Biden administration. Under current rules,

U.S. automakers are required to boost the fuel efficiency of passenger cars and light trucks to about 50 miles per gallon by 2031. The revised standards proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Wednesday would cut that to just 34 miles per gallon. In a statement, the Center for Biological Diversity wrote, quote, in one stroke, Trump's worsening three of our nation's most vexing problems, the thirst for oil, high gas pump costs, and global warming, unquote. President Trump said Wednesday he'll issue full and unconditional pardons for Democratic Congress member Henry Quayar and his wife Imelda, both of whom faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy. According to the indictment, the Quayar has

accepted roughly $600,000 worth of bribes from a Mexican bank and an oil and gas company owned by the government of Azerbaijan. On X, the Sunrise Movement, said, quote, this is disgusting. Henry Quayar, the last anti-choice Democrat in the House, sold out his own community for bribes from a foreign government and oil corporation. Then he cozyed up to Trump for a pardon while the Democratic establishment stood by and watched, they said. President Trump justified the pardon by praising Congressmember Quayor's stance on immigration. He's a respected person. He was treated very badly because he said that people should not be allowed to pour into our country.

And he was right. He didn't like open borders. And in media news, the Paramount Skydance Corporation has more than doubled the proposed breakup fee in its offer to acquire Warner Brothers discovery as it seeks to outbid rivals looking to acquire the media conglomerate. The proposed merger comes just months after Skydance completed its acquisition of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, and after Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump, who objected to have 60 minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris, Paramount Board Chair, and controlling

shareholder Sherry Redstone reportedly sought the settlement to ensure the FCC approve Paramount's merger. On Wednesday, Redstone defended the settlement during the Reuters' next summit here in New York City. I do believe it was the right decision. I think the trial had been set for two years out. The chaos that would have been created over the next two years, I'm not sure the company could have survived. The internal distractions, the external distractions in spite of everything that we were doing in the company and during those months we became the number four streaming service, nobody was talking about that. All people were talking about was the, you know, distraction of the Trump litigation. And those are some of the

headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. When we come back, we speak with Matt Dus of the Center for International Policy on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine as well as The Pentagon Watchdog report finding Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth risked endangering troops by sharing sensitive information about U.S. strikes in Yemen on a signal group chat. Stay with us. When I get older, I will be stronger. They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag. Born to a throne

Stronger than Rome But violent prone Poor people's own But it's my home All I have known Where I got grown Streets we would roam Out of the darkness

I came the farthest Among the hardest A Bible Learn from these streets It can be bleak Except no defeat Surrender retreat So we're struggling

Fighting to eat We wonder when we'll be free So we patiently wait For that faithful day It's not far away But for now we say When I get older I will be stronger

They'll call me freedom Just like a waving flag And then it goes back And then it goes back And then it goes back And then it goes when I get old I will be stronger They'll call me freedom

Just like a waving flag and then it goes back, and then it goes back, and then it goes back. Wave and flag by the Somali Canadian musician Canaan performing in our Democracy Now studio years ago. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Narmine Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

The Pentagon's Inspector General is set to release a report today on Defense Secretary Pete Hexert's use of the widely available social media app signal to discuss U.S. airstrikes in Yemen earlier this year. Two people familiar with the report's findings told news outlets that Hexeth endangered U.S. troops in using signal to discuss the strikes with several other senior Trump administration officials. The chat, which included Hexed's wife and brother, was revealed when the Atlantic's editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added.

to the Signal Group. We're joined now by Matt Duss, Executive Vice President at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. Matt, thanks so much for being with us. In a moment, we're going to talk to you about the negotiations around Ukraine. But let's start with this top news. And that is everything that's happening right now with Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, or as he calls himself, the War Secretary. If you can start off by talking about what's going to be released today, but many news outlets have already reported on saying that he shared sensitive information with a reporter and others about attacks on Yemen. Talk about the significance of this. Right. This happened last year as strikes,

U.S. strikes on Yemen against Yemen's Houthi government were about to begin. The Houthis, as people may remember had been launching strikes on shipping in the Red Sea and on Israel in protest of the Gaza War. The U.S. was about to undertake strikes against the Houthis. As you noted, the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was included on a signal chat of senior administration officials in which apparently now classified information was being shared by the Secretary of Defense, including when the strikes would start, and other things that he was not authorized to release. Now, the Secretary of Defense does have the authority to declassify information if he chooses, as does the president. But none of that clearly was done.

This was just carelessness. It was reckless. And as the report is going to say, this potentially put U.S. troops and service members in danger. And can you talk about the fact that Pete Hegseth, refuse to sit for an interview or hand over his phone? Is it just up to him, the man who is being investigated himself? And where does Roger Wicker, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed stand on this and this investigation?

What do you expect to take place? Could they force him? Well, I think Pete Hankseth, much like the president he served, sees himself. as essentially above the law, as unconstrained by legal procedures, by his own obligations, apparently to U.S. service members, given that he very clearly put them in danger. So unfortunately, it's not surprising that he would not sit for an interview. This investigation was a form of oversight, an important form of oversight, but I do think the more important form will come when we see what Congress is going to do about it.

You mentioned Senator Wicker, Senator Reid, in the Senate Armed Services Committee. How far do they push this? How aggressively are they going to be toward the administration when this report comes out? And I think the question really does come down to the Republicans, because unfortunately, in general, the Republican leadership has been pretty subservient to Trump. They have not been all that willing to assert their oversight authority, but given the recklessness of this act and also some of these other things, that have been piling up around Pete Hegseth, including the strikes on the alleged drugboats,

that he's facing now, from what I'm hearing, Republican impatience toward him is really, really growing on the hill. And this could be something that really pushes people over the edge, but we'll have to see. And very quickly, Matt, today the Admiral Mitch Bradley is expected to testify before Congress about the second strike on that September 2nd boat, what the Trump administration calls drug boats, of course, they have not presented any evidence, nine people killed in the first strike, two hanging on for dear life, and they then killed them. The significance of what this means and the overall attacks on the boats, as President Trump says, they're going to attack Venezuela directly imminently. Right. Unfortunately, it seems that Pete Higgseth is using

Admiral Bradley as a human shield here. We've seen just over the past few days. trying to put blame, or not put blame, he's trying to say, I stand behind Bradley who gave the order. I didn't give the order. They've had multiple stories about what happened, what didn't happen, who gave the order. But it is important to understand this is happening in a context of strikes that are not, clearly not, in the context of war, they are unauthorized. As you noted, there has been no proof given that these are drugboats at all, that these people were engaged in anything illegal. And even if they were, it seems absolutely unnecessary. to destroy these boats, to kill these men who have been convicted of no crime.

And, of course, not just unnecessary, but the question is if this is just outright murder, if these are war crimes. And finally, let me ask you about Admiral Alvin Halsey, the African-American head of Southcom, the first black head of Southcom, who's out next week, but was forced out apparently in October, after his objections to what's going on with these boats being targeted, the significance of this. Right. I mean, that happened.

There was a wave of firings essentially early in the Trump administration, especially in DOD, a clearing out of senior leaders who were seen to be not with the program, essentially, and that seems to be what had happened here, discomfort with what was going to be a really aggressive policy toward Latin America. And that's what we're seeing play out. But I do think, as you noted, while this is, this is, you know, really, really, I would say, objectionable and clearly criminal, it does come in the context of years and decades of U.S. abuse and U.S. violations around the world. So we need a deeper, we need to take a deeper look at the authorities that have been given and abused by successive administrations, not just this one.

Matt Dess, you're the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and also a former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. We also want to ask you about the ongoing negotiations to end Russia's war on Ukraine. On Tuesday, President Trump's envoy, Steve Whitcomb and son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for nearly five hours, but a deal to end the war in Ukraine was not reached. Russian officials described the talks as constructive, but said no compromise was reached on certain issues. Whitkoff and Kushner are set to meet today with Ukraine's lead negotiator in Florida for further talks.

Meanwhile, Putin is now in India meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This all comes as Germany's foreign ministers criticized Russia, saying he had seen no serious willingness on the Russian side to enter into North. negotiations. And NATO says, of course, that they're going to continue to supply U.S. weapons pay for and then supply U.S. weapons to Ukraine. Where does all this stand, Matt? I think, well, I mean, first of all, I would say efforts to end this war through diplomacy are good, and I commend them. I think most Americans would like to see this war,

and certainly the Ukrainians want this war to end, the Europeans want this war to end. But once again, I think we've arrived at the same place, which is that Vladimir Putin does not want this war to end, and certainly not on terms that would be remotely acceptable to Ukraine, by which I mean a resolution to this war that sustains and preserves Ukraine's independence, its democracy, and its ability to defend itself. I think a lot of people were kind of surprised by the extent to which the 28-point plan that was leaked a few weeks ago really essentially echoed Russia's preferences. said it was written in Russia. I don't know if that's true, but it clearly did reflect a lot of Vladimir Putin's own preferences for how the war should end. As an opening bid, I don't think we should make too much of it. It is good that these talks are going on. But again, I think we've arrived at the same place, which is that the person who has a very, very important vote here,

Vladimir Putin, is not supporting an end to the war. Well, it's extraordinary, Matt, because I did read over those 28 points. And it does seem, as many have commented, that most of Russia's demands have been met. So what explains their resistance to this proposal? And what parts did they, do we know, what they took umbrage with that they don't want to agree to? Well, I think there are issues, you know, there was, you know, kind of a negotiation going on within the Trump administration. You know, Whitkoff and Kushner put out this plan or were, you know, involved in constructing. And initially, Secretary of State Rubio then made changes internally. There's a kind of fight between the Rubio and the Vance Wing and the Trump administration here with the Vance

Wing being much more aggressively trying to end this war. I think there's some of the key concerns were the kind of agreement that Russia, that, excuse me, that Ukraine would not join NATO as a promise. Some people see that as unacceptable. Personally, my own view is everyone, I think, understands that Ukraine will not be joining NATO. I understand that you don't want to take that off the table at the outset of negotiations, but I don't think that shouldn't be allowed to be a roadblock to an agreement. At the same time, I also don't think that is the only thing that concerns Russia. As I said, Vladimir Putin's goals here, in my view, have not changed.

I've seen no evidence that his initial goal of curtailing Ukraine's independence and bringing it back under essentially Russian authority as a part of. of a broader Russian Imperium, that remains his ultimate goal. And any agreement short of that, it seems to me he's not going to go for. And in fact, on NATO, which of course, many speculated that this was indeed the reason that Russia invaded Ukraine, it's not only that the plan calls for an end to NATO expansion, but it says specifically singling out Ukraine that Ukraine should inscribe in its constitution that it will not join NATO

and that NATO would include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted if you could comment on that. Yeah, I think that really just goes way, way too far. I think there are commitments that could be made, assurances that could be made with regard

to Ukraine and NATO. But again, I do not think that NATO and Ukraine's possibility or impossibility of joining NATO is really the issue here. It is one among a whole set of issues that indicate Ukraine's ultimate orientation and its ultimate independence. Ukraine's independence is the real issue here, as far as I can tell. And the plan also says that all parties to the conflict, Ukraine and Russia, will receive

full amnesty once the proposal goes into effect, the ceasefire, if indeed that's what it is, the peace plan, which seems, some have said, in part geared towards having the unconstitutional, ICC warrant against Putin lifted and also absolving Russia of alleged war crimes, including what happened in Boucher. If you could comment on that. Yeah, I mean, that is, that's really objectionable. But, you know, again, as, as hard as it is to say, if that's something that gets us to an end to the war, a durable end to the war, that is something that we should consider. This is certainly not justice for the many, many victims of Russia's violence, which has been grotesque.

Unfortunately, the United States itself is not in a great position here, given the cover that we continue to give to partners like Israel for their war crimes in Gaza, clearly war crimes. So I think the United States and its allies in Europe would be in a much better position to push back against this if we were applying these standards equally, which we are not. And Matt, does the significance of the corruption scandal that's, engulfing the Zelensky administration with his number two man, Andre Yermak, the chief of staff, to Zelensky being forced out. You usually always see him at his side.

Yeah, I know. I think this has been a corruption scandal that has been brewing for a while, and the firing of Zelensky's number two man, his chief of staff, is obviously very significant. Ukraine continues to struggle with corruption problems that go back a long time. But I also think it's worth noting the fact that the number two leader in Ukraine was removed from power because of a corruption investigation is itself a very, very positive step. And finally, Matt, if you could comment on the sheer scale of the destruction that this war has wrought not only in terms of, you know, entire areas in Ukraine being flattened, but also that Russia has suffered over 600,000 casualties,

that is to say, people killed and wounded. This is roughly 10 times the number of Soviet casualties suffered over a decade in their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. And open source data has revealed that 111,000 Russian military personnel have been killed. Meanwhile, also open source data, shows that there have been about 400,000 Ukrainian casualties. And Zelensky himself has said that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. So if you could talk about this, I mean, this is a really extraordinary.

These are extraordinary numbers. It is extraordinary, and it's just a staggering waste. I mean, for what? For what did these people die? For what reason were they sent into this horrible meat grinder? for what was this destruction done to take some land in eastern Ukraine. I think this is, again, as horrible as this is and as horrible it is to consider the fact that there might have to be some form of amnesty, I do also think it's worth noting that

Vladimir Putin, after nearly four years of war, has not achieved anything close to his ultimate goal. And I do think this is worth considering, as we talk about the possibility of a ceasefire, Ukraine has performed far, has done greater things than I think anyone expected. So given the loss of life, given the destruction, I know it's hard for many Ukrainians to consider having to make some concessions to end the war. But I do think there is a victory narrative here for Ukraine to take. One other thing I do want to mention in terms of the costs of this war is the tens of thousands of Ukrainian children that were taken into Russia and distributed among Russian families. That is absolutely something we should not forget.

that is something on which there should be no compromise. These children need to be returned to their families. And what does the plan say about that, the proposal that the U.S. has put forth? I'm unclear what it says on that. This is something that's clearly going to be contested if we get into anything close to final status talks, which it doesn't seem like we're close to right now. Matt Doss, you want to thank you so much for being with us, Executive Vice President, the Center for International Policy and former Foreign

policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. When we come back, President Trump says he's going to limit immigration from, quote, the third world. We'll be back to talk about this and what's happening here in New York City. Ice raids that have been thwarted by activists blocking ice. cars. Stay with us. Ah, Muhammad, Nadeh, Ngaabu, and fulah, jahdhah, Shadher, Nabi.

Yeah, Rassauulul Allah, Rani, Allah, Rāsaul Allah, Arbi. Malianna, and all the al-a-gallu-a-gum-cun-a-gum-sallu-sallu-callu-sallu-sallu-sallu-a-n-n-n-a-n-n-nabye. Yeah, Rasul-Lah, Habibu, Allah, Rassol Allah, Arbi. Malian musician Kairarbi is performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warrant Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermin-Sheikh. We look now at the escalating crackdown on lawful immigration pathways

as the Trump administration has announced its pausing green card and U.S. citizenship processing for immigrants from 19 non-European countries that were already subject to a travel ban put in place earlier this year. This comes as federal immigration agents have reportedly begun operations targeting the Somatian community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. The Trump administration's announcements has also paused all asylum decisions for immigrants currently in the U.S. after Navran National was charged with merging a National Guard member and critically injuring another in Washington, D.C. last week. He's pleaded not guilty. For more, we're joined by Marada Walda,

a president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, part of Mayor Alex Zoran Mamdani's Committee on Immigrant Justice. In a moment, we're going to ask you about what's happened here in New York with attempted ice raids thwarted by the community. But first, let's talk about exactly what President Trump is talking about when he says he's going to stop immigration from the, quote, third world. And what real life effects is this having? So Donald Trump has made several horrendous allegations against immigrant communities, especially in the wake of the unfortunate and devastating incident in D.C., where he is saying now that they are going to be pausing all asylum applications and reviewing those who have been approved under the previous

administration as well. The problem with that is that asylum and refugee status are some of the most, the hardest status is to attain. The amount of vetting that you have to go through is insane in itself, but also it's a very diligent process. So for them to say that they're pausing all asylum claims, that they're going to be reviewing all refugees who've come into this country, and now saying that they're going to pause and, in essence, ban all black, brown and anyone who isn't white from coming into the United States, just as another slap in the face of the communities that continue to make this country move forward, the economic engine, the heartbeat of this nation. So what we're going to see is millions of families who have been

waiting, following the process, following the law to the letter of it, who are waiting for their families to be reunited with them here, pretty much having to be left in limbo, not knowing if they're ever going to get connected with each other again. And do you know, like on what grounds, I mean, apart from just a presidential whim, has. he first of all chosen those 19 countries and you know has anything like this ever happened here

before like an outright suspension of a consideration of these applications there has been under Trump 1.0 he did this almost immediately after coming into office it was sued

several times and in essence what happened was the ban was in part struck down but then also upheld by the Supreme Court because saying that the executive had the power to do so. This is different though. They're doing this along a different route where they're trying to say this is going to be a temporary measure to ensure that they are quote unquote fully vetting individuals who are coming into this nation. And people are already reporting that they've appeared for a green card interviews and U.S. citizenship ceremonies. And they've been

turned away without explanation, they didn't even know that their appointments were cancelled. What kind of recourse do people have now? I mean, this is an extraordinary move. This is really, imagine going through a process that can take up to 10, 15, 20 years. And then at the very end, when you are about to become a naturalized U.S. citizen who has contributed to this nation, who has continued to build your family here, built your life here for decades. And then at the, at the last second being told, get out of the line, you're not allowed to get naturalized today, or even families who've waited forever to actually get their appointment to have their family come in for a green card interview and either being rejected and saying your appointment

has been canceled or that the person is getting detained and being put through deportation proceedings, which is also happening. And even to get a green card, as indeed someone who's gone through the process, there is an extraordinary amount of vetting that takes place. And an extraordinary amount of paperwork. And after that vetting, it takes five years to get citizenship. Like, what more vetting is even possible to do? It's just, you know, lunacy at this point of the excuses that they keep coming up with when we know what they're trying to do.

This has never been about vetting. This has never been about security and safety. It's about cruelty. And that's their point. And they'll continue to lean in on their cruelty. and we have to continue to fight back. I wanted to just name those countries, 19 countries, that they are stopping processing for. And they're already talking about adding a number of other countries to this, Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial, Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

Yeah. These are similar countries that he tried initially putting the full ban, the partial ban, and then more restrictions on when he first came into office and saying that he was going to do the same that he did the last time around. So this is sort of using the same trick out of the same toolbox of trying to just harm more communities across this country. And if there were any doubt about what the actual intention of the Trump administration appears to be, he's actually. actually said specifically that the U.S. should welcome more people from countries like Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, in addition to, of course, his special fondness for Afrikanas in South Africa, from South Africa. Well, we don't have to guess why he's saying this. He wants to make, and his entire anti-immigrant platform, his war on immigrants, and his mass deportation agenda is all to lead to making America white again.

And that is what it comes down to. So let's talk about the resistance. Here in New York on Saturday, police arrested a number of protesters after people block the exit of a parking garage in lower Manhattan where federal agents were staging before an immigration raid targeting street vendors from West Africa, similar to a raid in October on Canal Street. This weekend, Time Magazine ran a headline that read how 200 New Yorkers foiled an ice raid before it even began. You got there soon after this whole thing was happening. Marad, your staff was there. Can you talk about what took place?

And also, I mean, New York City is a sanctuary city. Police did make arrests about a dozen people. Are they cooperating with the ICE agents? So last Saturday, you had over several dozen ICE agents who had been congregating in this garage facility. And I think people don't realize how big and small New York City is. We are a city of 9 million people. We are across 300 square miles. And, you know, it is very hard not to be noticed, especially when you are about to do something that people in the city do not welcome.

Several people witnessed this, became several dozens after they put out the call, and then several hundred showed up to push back against them. And in essence, these New Yorkers thwarted this enfold, this plot that they had of doing this mass theatrics on Canal Street yet again. The problem with that is that when the protesters did arrive, what you ended up seeing was NYPD coming in to provide cover for ICE. and the way in which NYPD is reporting it is that they were doing crowd control and helping get them, quote, unquote, out of the parking lot so they can be on their way. There's a very slippery slope here where they're operating in a gray area where they did collude with ice, even if it was for the crowd control in that moment. But what does that mean for the future? What does that mean when NYPD shows up to ice raid, which has been happening across. the city since the inception of this administration for the past 11 months, just this morning

in Jackson Heights, there was a massive raid. So what does it mean when you're having these instances where New Yorkers are going to stand up and nonviolently defend their community? Let's turn to a story right here, not far from Democracy Now Studios, as New Yorkers protests escalating ice raids in the city. Some are also volunteering to support newly arrived migrants and asylum seekers, including those from West Africa. I want to turn to a report by Democracy Now's Messiah Rhodes. We're here in front of plato, where Cafe Wall, Witte Kitchen, provides over 150 meals a day, with its origins and supporting West African migrants, escaping political oppression and violence from their home country, as well as the balance of granolism as a journey

to United States. Cafe Wall provides a warm meal and a safe haven for where West African migrants just newly arriving in New York City. So my name is Tyler Heffron. I'm the executive director of Evie Loves NYC. We are a organization founded back in 2020 with a mission to fight food insecurity all over New York City. In our third year of operations, we started to work with a lot of refugee and asylum seeker populations coming through the city runs St. Bridget's Migrant Reticketing Center in the East Village. And at that point, we began to meet a lot of asylum seekers from West Africa who were coming over as single adults to seek asylum from their respective countries.

So from there, what we started to do is we opened a volunteer program, focused on asylum seekers to get them the letters they needed to stay in the New York City shelter system. That began in Ramadan of 2024, where we invited the handful of people that we had been meeting on a close basis to come into our kitchen and prepare authentic West. African meals. They just sent us the ingredients. They knew all the recipes by heart and it was some of their favorite childhood dishes from back home. So it was a really fun week where every night we would prepare a Iftar meal for a different mosque or community organization serving hundreds of New Yorkers who were observing fasting during Ramadan. And that sort of began this impromptu restaurant training program. About six months later, we founded a full-time kitchen called Cafe Wall, which means cafeteria in the Fulani language. That's developed

to a fuller scale workforce training program where the hope is that the people that are getting paid wages to work in our kitchen are getting ready to work in some of your favorite restaurants around New York City. So we work with different mutual aids like East Village Neighbors Who Care to help them with the different supporting services like English lessons, resume writing, job applications, all those different supports that we take for granted here as citizens in addition to the workforce training that they're receiving in the kitchen every day. My name is Abdul Karim. I'm from Guinea. I have been in the capital seven months.

I'm cooking here, rice, and the chicken, the salad, the potato. What future do you see in the United States? I'm not to come here for looking for money and something. I'm coming here for help the people here. When I help the people here, the people will help me one day. Hey, I'm Jamiba. Oh, yeah, it was back in January, 24. I was just trying to find a place where it's warm because it was cold at that time.

So at Thompson's Park, they told me about Earth Shosh. It was a warming center for everyone. So I went there and, you know, I see how the East Village neighbors who care was taking. care of the guys so I was very impressed and then I proposed myself to be volunteer you can talk about the role of interpreters how interpreters are a part of cafe wall when it comes to the language barrier oh yeah for the interpreter it's a the good thing because a lot of guys here they are not they didn't go to school they just speak fulani and it's very difficult for them to speak english so they are very confident to see the guys from their country and speaking their own languages and to be an interpreter,

they are very confident and comfortable to talk about their problem, even it's very privacy. So they do a lot of jobs here. So I'm so happy to have them alongside me to help and to continue to run Caffe Wal. My name is Brian Duggan. I'm an attorney. And I'm a, uh, I'm a attorney. And, uh, I volunteer for non-for-profit organizations like Cafe Wall and also provide low bono services and pro bono services for some of the assailees here. Why is it harder for West African migrants to find legal representation compared to others? Yeah, well, it's very difficult because of the language barriers in a lot of ways, but also because the system itself is so swamped with people applying for asylum

and there's a low capacity for legal support, and a lot of attorneys require a lot of money up front which these people are unable to provide. So they rely on a lot of people to provide pro bono services, pro-safe services, which are self-help type services, and attorneys such as myself who try to provide low-cost services for them so they could at least have some support at the hearings. In what countries do you commonly see?

people come from and what are they usually escaping from that you've seen? The countries I've been associated with mostly West Africans. Guinea is one of them, Morocco and also Mauritania. Those three areas have a lot of issues with their government, especially Guinea and Mauritania. They have government control and most of the asylees here are refugees as ethnic refugees because they belong to an ethnic group called the Fulani who have been persecuted by the powers that are comprised of another ethnic group, the Malenke.

And so historically since France left Guinea, the government's been occupied by one dictator after another, and they've always persecuted the Fulani. The Fulani make up the largest population, but they're usually the targets of most of the violence. The government treats them and persecutes them with imputing. They beat them regularly. They have what they call enforced disappearances

where they are taken away from their homes and the families don't know where they are and usually have no opportunities to reclaim their bodies after they found out that they were dead. This goes on all the time, and there is no recourse. It doesn't seem to be any kind of pressure for this to abate. So this results in a lot of refugees coming to the United States.

Special thanks to Democracy Now is Messiah Rhodes, Safwat Nizal, and Robbie Karen for that report. On Tuesday, I got a chance to ask New York mayor-elect Zora Mamdani about protecting workers from ICE. Can I ask a question about money of the workers in this city are immigrants? When you met with President Trump, did you get a concession from him around ICE raids and not moving in to this city? When I met with the president, I made very clear that these kinds of raids are cruel and inhumane, that they are raids that do nothing to serve the interests of public safety, and that my responsibility is to be the mayor to each and every person that calls this city their home. And that includes millions of immigrants of which I am one. And I am proud that I will be the first immigrant mayor of the city in generations. And prouder still for the fact that I will live up to the statue that we have in our harbor.

And the ideals which we have long proclaimed as being those of the city, but which have too often been ones we do not actually enforce and celebrate on a daily basis. And that is who I will be as the mayor of the city. That's mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani, standing with Senator Bernie Sanders. were walking the picket line with Starbucks workers who are also going to stage another protest today at 1 o'clock in front of the Empire State Building. Marad Ovalda, you are serving on the transition team of the mayor-elect and the mayor. You'll be advising him. As you listen to that report of groups that are serving the West African community in this whole question of how the city will be working with or against the president when it comes to

ICE raids. What kind of protection do people have and what can Mayor Mamdani do? Well, the first thing is having a mayor who's actually going to stand up and fight for New Yorkers is an amazing feat to have in this moment. The other piece is that we already have numerous sanctuary policies on the books, which the current administration has been running. of Fallon, which DOI, the Department of Investigation released yesterday report of several incidences where they had to investigate and saw that there was some efforts of collusion from pro-Palestine activists to an NYPD officer going rogue and assisting ICE agents. So we want to make sure that anyone who's working for the city of New York is abiding by local

laws, including NYPD, DOC, and all city agencies. So an audit of every agency and their communication is absolutely necessary. And then training workers to be able to understand that your job is not to harm and contribute to family separation or hurting our communities in our city, but it's to actually uplift all New Yorkers.

Additionally, investing in immigration legal services, you heard the lawyer from Evie loves New York City, which is an amazing member organization of ours that serves thousands of people every year. A big issue is that we don't have enough immigration lawyers and we need additional immigration legal services funding from the city of New York. So making sure that we're following the laws that we currently have on the books, expanding where we can, and then making sure that we're investing in our communities.

43% of all workers in New York City are foreign-born. 43%, 50% of small businesses are immigrant-owned as well. So we need to make sure that we are ensuring that the safety and security of all these folks is protected by the city of New York. We just have 30 seconds, but we wanted to ask you about this. Chinese father and son, six-year-old son, the father named Faye, the six-year-old named Yuan Shwin, who were picked up by ICE. The father sent to an ICE jail. The son, the six-year-old, no one knows where he is. The father is currently in Orange County in detention. The son is in

O.R custody, which means that's where normally children who are unaccompanied, which is not the situation with this family. The Trump administration is continuing their family separation agenda, and we need to fight back against that as well. Lareda Wilde, thanks so much for clarifying that, President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, part of Mayor Lexor on Mamdani's Committee on Immigrant Justice. That does it for our show. Tonight, I'll be in Sag Harbor on the east end of Long Island,

where there will be a 7.30 screening of the film, Steal This Story, Please, about Democracy Now. It's at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. I'll be doing the Q&A afterwards with the filmmakers, T. Lesson, and Carl Deal. Check out our website at DemocracyNow.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmine Sheikh. Thanks for joining us.