Front Burner - Trump’s expanding immigration dragnet

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

The Trump administration is continuing to expand its mass deportation of immigrants, and more and more people are getting caught up in its dragnet — from green card holders to Canadians, and even U.S. citizens. Court orders to block many of these actions are mounting, but the Trump administration is pushing back hard — going so far as pushing for the impeachment of a judge involved in one case.Today, we’re speaking to Arelis Hernandez, a border reporter for The Washington Post, for a look at what separates this from previous immigration crackdowns, and where this all might lead. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The following is advertiser content from Emirates. Private suites on Emirates First Class make the journey to your next destination something to remember. With a suite of your own, you can embrace the luxury of unmatched privacy and a serene space to relax and unwind during your flight. Shut your fully enclosed private suite door and sink into your luxurious seat, which you can convert to a fully flat bed at your convenience. Make use of the personal mini bar while indulging in world-class in-flight entertainment, all on your very own widescreen TV. Enjoy premium skincare products and designer pajamas, and when you're ready to transition from rest to refresh, indulge in the rejuvenating onboard shower spa.

This is your journey, your way. So if you want to trade that privacy for a little socializing, all you have to do is visit the onboard lounge where premium beverages, canapes, and fellow passengers await you. Book now on emmerits.ca. This is a CBC Podcast.

Hi, I'm Jamie Prosson. is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. The Trump administration is continuing to expand its campaign of mass deportation of immigrants, and more and more people are getting caught up in its dragnet. Everyone from green card holders to US citizens to Canadians are being detained, and many targeted for removal. Court orders trying to block many of these actions are mounting, but the Trump administration is pushing back on them. Hard. Today we're speaking to Arelis Hernandez,

she's a border reporter for the Washington Post based in Texas. And we're going to talk about what separates this from previous US immigration crackdowns and where it could lead. Arelis, thank you so much for making the time today. It's a pleasure to be asked to come on. It's really great to have you. So you have been covering the border and migration for a long time. How unusual or unprecedented is this immigration crackdown that we're seeing now, even compared

to the last Trump administration? So there are aspects of this border immigration crackdown that are sort of novel in that in many respects, you know, the Trump administration is using the law that's on the books, but sort of interpreting the law and executing the law to an extreme that I don't think we've seen in perhaps the last quarter century, and even since perhaps the first Trump administration. So for example, you had previous presidents, the Clinton administration, the Obama administration, and even the Biden administration that were very much deportation operations that were underway. But for the most part, those deportation operations

prioritize certain kinds of immigrants. For example, people who had criminal records or who had actively committed crimes in the United States, not just where they had come from, and national security threats. And those kinds of people, for the most part, were being rounded up. There were others, of course, who were caught up in those collateral arrests. But what we're seeing under the Trump administration is a complete sort of erasing away of any kind of priorities of immigrants and basically saying that immigrants across the board who are here illegally or who have some kind of irregular status in the United States are vulnerable. And to go even a step further, they're also targeting and reviewing visa holders and green

card holders, which is something that I cannot remember that previous administrations, again, at least in the last 25 years, were actively engaged in that kind of behavior. One other example is that was particularly with deportations is that there are certain places where ICE agents won't go. ICE officers typically won't go into schools. They won't go into hospitals. They won't go into houses of worship because these are considered safe spaces where people go freely to worship and these are not relationships within the community that they want to compromise.

That's out the window now and ICE agents have the authority and the discretion to go into spaces where they think they can make the arrest. Just to further illustrate what you have been talking about, I wonder if what we could do is go through some things that we've been seeing in the news of late, and then we'll get into more of the stories that you've been covering personally. One of the major headlines of the past few days has been these planes that deported Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador. Even though a federal judge issued an order blocking

the deportations. The Trump administration has said that these men are members of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang. What do we know about these men and if that's actually true or not? Like, do we even know their names, their ages, anything? So we're coming up on a situation similar to what happened with the removal of certain immigrants to Guantanamo Bay. Ten migrants who were flown from the Texas border in a military transport plane, now under armed guard at Guantanamo Bay.

The Department of Homeland Security, which released images from the transport to Guantanamo, say the men are members of a violent Venezuelan gang, the worst of the worst, they say. In that the Trump administration has put out a couple of names of individuals and in court filings as well, describing individuals who had active roles and had been arrested in the United States and were wanted by Interpol. But we don't have any indication that these individuals represent a majority of those who were sent to El Salvador. For example, we've heard from the family members, they've taken to TikTok and to Instagram and other social media to plead the cases on behalf of loved ones that they say have no criminal records, have no connection whatsoever to Tren de Aragua and simply were guilty by association because

of the tattoos or perhaps the relationships that they had while they were in the United States. So we're trying to get answers from the administration on how many of the 230 plus individuals that they've sent to El Salvador. In fact, right now I'm trying to track down a man who from Dallas, a Venezuelan national who disappeared. His attorneys can't find him. His wife, who is nine months pregnant, can't find him. And his relatives in Venezuela are pouring over images coming out of the Salvadoran government as well as the US government to see if he is among the group of people who are sent to this notorious prison in El Salvador.

Wow. White House officials have said that more than half of the immigrants on those flights were expelled using this 18th century law called the Alien Enemies Act. Is that the law that you were referring to earlier? And if so, like, could you tell me a bit more about it and when it's been used in the past? Yes, that's exactly the Alien Enemies Act is a colonial era, if you will, statute that is in the law that basically empowers the president of the United States to name or to designate nationalities or individuals or a special group that represent a specific national security threat. It's usually invoked in wartime. It was invoked in the War of 1812,

during World War I, and probably most famously during World War II, it was part of the justification for the incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans in camps throughout the United States. And so part of the justification that the Trump administration had advanced for invoking this particularly severe authority has to do with the fact that he's declared a national emergency and called what has happened with mass migration and invasion.

And so under the peacetime rules and him invoking an invasion he is asserting that he has the authority to make these kinds of declarations and basically eliminate due process for anyone that's deemed a national security threat under the terms of the invocation. The president is operating at the apex of his authority when you are dealing with questions of invasion and questions of alien enemy infiltration, as well as the expulsion of terrorist illegal aliens from the country.

The Trump administration also released a highly produced video online that seems to have originally been posted by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. And it shows some of these men being escorted in chains on and off planes with armed forces pushing the men's heads down as they walked and treating them pretty roughly. Then later you see scenes of some of their heads being shaved and then they're thrown in jail. And El Salvador, talk to me about some of the reaction to this video, though. I've seen some analysts describe it as fascist propaganda, including the historian Timothy Snyder. I think it's hard not to look at those images, the sort of highly stylized music that they've put on, you know, in the background sometimes without authorization from the artists who create that music. As being anything other than propaganda, right? If you are a supporter of President Trump, if you support the mass deportation of individuals

without due process out of the country, this looks like the major win. This is exactly what you voted for. This is exactly the kind of thing, the kind of sort of macho, braggadashio, aggressive, strong man type footage that you want to see from your president. But yes, if you are someone who cares about human rights or is a family member of one of these individuals, or just generally is concerned about this kind of imagery and what it evokes historically, it's hard not to look at this and say that it's absolutely propaganda, that

it absolutely serves the purpose of fueling and continuing to build a narrative around what the administration is looking to carry out, which is again, mass deportation. We know it's no secret that the President Trump has been disappointed with the mass deportation numbers as of a few weeks ago. And so we know also the Washington Post reported that there are allegedly quotas that federal law enforcement are looking to meet for removals from this country. And so this is all part of that sort of ecosystem of information that in some ways is transparent, right? But it's a selective transparency

that the Trump administration is practicing. You mentioned earlier that WHO is being targeted has expanded. Let's talk briefly about probably the most high profile case here, Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil, who is a green card holder of Palestinian descent and he was involved in organizing student protests against the war in Gaza last year. Just to quickly recap, he was detained by ICE earlier this month and is currently being

held in Louisiana. You're going to have to come with us. I'm not going to come with you. Don't wait. No one's going to do this thing. No one's going to work though. Show us what's going on in Newport. You guys really don't need to be doing all this. The Department of Homeland Security said Khalil was detained because of Trump's executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism. Mr. Khalil is a lawful permanent resident.

He was taken by U.S. government agents in retaliation essentially for exercising his First Amendment rights, for speaking up in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for being critical of the U.S. government and of the Israeli government. We briefly talked about Khalil in yesterday's show, and we'll likely be talking about him soon in other contexts. But today, I really want to focus on the immigration questions here, because again, this is a green card holder, a permanent resident. And what do we know about the legality of this? Like legally, can you detain and deport

a legal permanent resident because of an executive order of this kind of nature? So my understanding of the legal argument that they've put forth has a lot to do with an authority that the secretariat State has. Again, they're sort of looking deeply into the law and pulling out these, if in some ways, antiquated pieces of legislation or legislation that are powers and statutes that haven't been used for a very long time. And the Secretary of State apparently has some authority to sort of define the terms by which a visa holder, is my understanding, violates whatever the secretary of state deems is like a, you know, connection and that's national security threat or something. I think the sort of broader alarm

that is sort of sweeping the country right now is that, you know, Mahmoud Kalia was, as you said, a legal permanent resident, someone who's acquired a certain set of rights through the legal immigration process. What message does that send then to anyone in this country who is a green card holder about the powers that this government is looking to exercise when it comes to expelling people who express views or who are practicing their politics in a way that the current administration does not agree with. That's sort of the big, big question. I have not seen yet that the administration has put forth a lot of evidence to suggest that Mr. Calillo was committing a crime. It might be worth noting here,

according to court documents, a Latino man who was born in Chicago was also arrested by ICE on January 31st and spent most of the night in a detention facility until agents looked at his ID and realized that he was in fact an American citizen and they released him. But what does that say to you about this moment,

that that even happened in the first place? One, that there seems to be quite a bit of pressure. I know I'm being charitable here, but quite a bit of pressure on ICE and federal law enforcement, who have been called upon to participate in this mass deportation operation. Two, it signals to me that they're not paying close attention to the details of individuals.

This should have been something that they could have easily cleared up, just look up his ID in the system or presented other kinds of evidence, whether it was a passport, had family members bring that down. But this drag in of itself, in the way that it's being carried out, is not performing the checks, is not sort of building in what you would normally expect from the American system of,

democratic system of due process. Again, I have a similar case out of New Mexico as well. They're popping up all over the country of individuals who should not have been detained under any normal circumstances, but have fined themselves in ICE detention for a long period of time, and their attorneys are unable to get any kinds of answers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It really feels as though we have turned a page historically here in the United States on how the government operates and the kind of information and transparency

and due process that they're practicing in service of this larger purpose that the president has pointed out in terms of mass deportation. destination something to remember. With the suite of your own, you can embrace the luxury of unmatched privacy and a serene space to relax and unwind during your flight. Shut your fully enclosed private suite door and sink into your luxurious seat, which you can convert to a fully flat bed at your convenience. Make use of the personal mini bar while indulging in world-class in-flight entertainment, all on your very own widescreen TV. Enjoy premium skincare products and designer pajamas, and when you're ready to transition from rest to refresh, indulge in the rejuvenating onboard shower spa.

This is your journey, your way. So if you want to trade that privacy for a little socializing, all you have to do is visit the onboard lounge where premium beverages, canapes, and fellow passengers await you. Book now on emirates.ca. What do you see when you look around?

Lively cities, grown neighborhoods, things that connect us. For those in the skilled trades, it's a world they helped create. Discover more than 300 careers, paid apprenticeships, and the unmatched feeling of saying, I made that. Learn more at Canada.ca slash skilled trades.

A message from the government of Canada. I don't want to make you repeat yourself too much here, but we've also seen stories, for example, of a Canadian woman. She's an entrepreneur, an actor, who was reportedly trying to cross the border from Mexico to San Diego with an incomplete application for a work visa, and she ended up detained for close to two weeks in a facility in Arizona in quite inhumane conditions. I was put in a cell, and I had to sleep on a mat with no blanket, no pillow, with an aluminum foil wrapped over my body like a dead body for two and a half days.

We were up for 24 hours, wrapped in chains. I have never in my life seen anything so inhumane. There was also a German green card holder who has been in the US since his teens. He was re-entering the country and was detained at the airport. The reasons are still unclear. His mother has told media that he was violently interrogated, stripped naked and forced into a cold shower, deprived of food and water and sleep. You were just in jail and you have to wait that you can get out and you never know when

it happens. These are, of course, the kinds conditions that that thousands and thousands of other people have described when they're detained by U.S. immigration officials, often black or brown migrants, often from countries the U.S. considers unimportant or suspicious. In that sense, the treatment of these two people is not remarkable and I want to make it really clear that the fact that these are white people from wealthy countries doesn't make their cases more important than anyone else's, but it does seem unusual, right? Normally, people with that kind of social capital are not the ones immigration officials

target for detention, especially for what sounds like fairly minor infractions. And so what does the fact that they were detained say to you? Are these just more examples of how big this dragnet has gotten? I think they are examples, but I think what's important here is sort of the broader message that the Trump administration is looking to send,

whether it's through his special advisor, Stephen Miller. The president reserves the right to exercise all necessary authorities to secure the homeland and to repel any invasion or incursion. His borders are Tom Homan. Every day the men and women of ICE are going to be in the neighborhoods of this nation arresting criminal, illegal, alien, public, state, state threats and national security threats.

We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming. Or through DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Trump has been extremely aggressive and making sure that we're arresting dangerous individuals, getting them out of the country. But also is sending a message to the world that if you don't do everything by the exact letter of what the United States has laid out in the law, we will punish you. But the

second part of this is that I do think something very serious has changed. The immigration system in the United States is largely built on discretion. At every point of the immigration process, there is a certain amount of discretion that each agent, each officer exercises as part of their job. And it seems as though the message has been sent throughout the federal law enforcement system that there's zero tolerance for any kind of weirdness or deviation or something that looks suspect in the process.

And what usually, so in the case of, for example, the Canadian actor and the German citizen or green card holder. Ordinarily, these are these are cases that you would expect an officer to exercise a particular amount of discretion and try to work out, right, to try and figure out, OK, where where did the issue come about here? Where where is the discrepancy? And without knowing the exact details of how these encounters went down and hearing

from federal law enforcement on what they saw, you know, they interpret it as a threat, as a deviation from the law and are not being given as much discretion to sort of work things out the way they would have perhaps during previous administration and simply put this person in detention. We've been talking about some of the more high profile cases, but I wonder if we could talk too about your own reporting here and what you've been hearing from people impacted by these policies over the last couple of months. Yeah, I have several cases that I'm pursuing and trying to understand, you know, what exactly

tipped ICE agents off. For example, right now, I'm trying to track down this individual who's disappeared from the ICE system. Normally, if you have a loved one or a client, if you're an attorney in ICE detention, using their A number, which is something, it's called an alien number, but it's like a social security number or inmate number, you're able to go into the system, plug in their number and find out where they're being detained. They get moved around a lot, but for the most part, you're able to track their movements and find out where they're being detained. They get moved around a lot, but for the most part, you're able to track their movements and get in touch with them.

In the last several days, for whatever reason, folks are not finding their loved ones. Attorneys, they've simply disappeared from the system and they don't know where they are. And it's in the case of a young man who is a Venezuelan national in Dallas. He is an asylum seeker. He had applied for asylum. He had an ICE check-in in late January, which is a normal sort of procedural thing that many people who are seeking asylum in this country do. And during that ICE check-in, which is supposed to be unremarkable, he was detained.

And he has been in detention ever since. His wife has been working to get him released. He had a bond hearing tomorrow, he has a bond hearing. And this weekend he disappeared from the system. And while family members suspect he might've been one of the individuals who was put on that plane to El Salvador, they have no idea where he is.

And this feels rather unusual. It's just one of several more that are again popping up around the country, including in New Mexico, where we're not really sure what happened and we're not getting answers from US authorities on like why this is happening or how it's happening under what authority it's happening. Do we have a sense of how this is likely to play out in the courts? All of this, what kinds of legal cases are already being mounted? What sense do we have of the Trump administration's strategy to combat them?

Well, so there are lots of cases. It's hard to keep track of them all. Our team at the Washington Post is about seven of us and we have a spreadsheet full of different cases that we're trying to track. There are cases on asylum at the border. There are cases on DACA, which is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. These are the so-called dreamers. There are cases pertaining to specifically people disappearing in the system or the transfer to Guantanamo.

There's so many cases. And I think what the pattern that we've noticed, I can't tell you ultimately how these cases will be decided. In some cases, like a lot of this power rests in the executive branch and the Trump administration and President Trump has the authority to do some of these things. It's within his executive powers. In other cases, the pattern that seems to be exemplary, and simplified by the most recent case of the flights to El Salvador, is that the Trump administration knows that there will be court challenges. And it seems that the pattern is emerging is that because

they know that these challenges will come, that they are pushing forward anyway, and trying to get as much done, because they know that litigation takes time. And in the meantime, they can carry out their policy until a judge comes and stays or imposes a temporary restraining order, which is usually what is asked for at the very early stages of these cases. One of the strategies that the Trump administration and government attorneys have been arguing is that the court doesn't have authority to stop ongoing processes, that it should continue the litigation, but it shouldn't issue any kind of stays or TROs on individual removals of people from the

country because it doesn't have that authority. I don't know the legality of that, but it's a tactic to try and keep the wheels of government moving in the direction that the Trump administration wants while continuing to litigate these cases. And there's no clearer example than what just happened. The Trump administration quietly invoked the Alien Enemies Act on Friday. It was funny because at the Washington Post and I'm sure at other newsrooms across the country we had heard that it was coming up Friday. We were all ready and in position to go, you know, start the reporting and pushing on the

questions. We were ready, had things pre-written and then nothing happened to our knowledge. Only later did we find out that once the ACLU had filed their complaint in court around 2 a.m. on Saturday, that they had quietly invoked the Alien Enemies Act without making any kind of public announcement and not doing that until later in the day. And that was clearly, it seems, a way for them to be able to get, again, the wheels of government moving towards their end without interference of the court that they knew would be coming shortly. And they were able, at least two of those flights were able to get in the air before

the actual order came down from the judge. And there's a question right now as to whether in the third airplane that left, if it in fact defied a court order. I think we're still waiting to see how that's going to play out. There's a couple, there's a hearing today, I believe. But all of this is just, you know, this is the way it's worked in the United States for several years now where it's been a battle in the courts in part because Congress has not acted in any way to change the laws, to reform the laws, to act as that check and balance that in years past they have been.

Is this shaping up to be like a larger fight at the Supreme Court in any way? I think that is the hope of a lot of this litigation is that they'll tie it up in courts again continue to do what they do. And that a Supreme Court where the majority was largely appointed by President Trump would rule in favor of what they're doing or would, you know, set aside precedent or create new precedent that holds up the executive power of the presidency in these actions. So I think for some of these cases, yes, that is ultimately where they will go. And being that they hand down the final law of the land, I think there's a lot of expectation and room from all sides of this immigration crackdown

for some clarity on what is and isn't legal. Okay, Arales, this is really helpful. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm happy to help. So before we go today, yesterday Trump called for the impeachment of the judge who ruled against his deportation of those flights of Venezuelans to prisons in El Salvador. Hours later, House Republicans moved to do just that. Representative Brandon Gill of Texas introduced articles of impeachment against the judge, arguing he, quote, overstepped

his authority, compromised the impartiality of the judiciary, and created a constitutional crisis. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Pueasant. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.