It Could Happen Here - Trump's Deportation Plans

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

James, Robert, and Sophie discuss what we know about the incoming Trump administration's plans to deport undocumented people and how likely we are to see mass deportations in the next four years. Al Otro Lado: https://alotrolado.org/ Haitian Bridge Alliance: https://haitianbridgealliance.org/ Sources: https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/MIGRATION-DEPORTATIONS/akpeoeoerpr/ https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/title-8-and-title-42-statistics-fy22 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-trump-would-crack-down-immigration-second-term-2023-11-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pledges-10000-extra-border-agents-fight-with-harris-over-immigration-2024-10-13/ https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/mass-deportation https://www.ice.gov/identify-and-arrest/287gSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

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We love to crumble. Yeah. And part of that is understanding what is going to happen and how it is going to happen and absorbing that knowledge and what you can do with it so today james is going to tell us about trump's plans for migrants yep yeah i guess in terms of what's going to happen we we don't know, right? Trump said a lot of stuff in his first term and kind of didn't stick the landing on a lot of it. He tried, but they're more experienced now.

And I think crucially, they have a much more favorable Supreme Court and probably will have an even more favorable Supreme Court by the end of this term. So a plan to deport up to a million people this year was one of the very few concrete and tangible promises that the Trump campaign made. They had a lot of vibes, nasty vibes. But in terms of like, we will do X by Y, this was one of the very few. Now, Trump tried to deport a lot of people in his first term. by his first term, right? The one consistent part of his policy ever since he rode sideways down an escalator in 2015

and then shit-talked Mexican people has been anti-migrant policy. He didn't really stick the landing on mass deportations in his first term. In fact, Biden deported more people in 2023 than Trump did in any year of his first term. In fact, Trump also fell behind Obama in terms of deportations per year. None of that means that he won't be able to do that this time,

right? I'm just trying to put some numbers on his promises last time. So I want to look first at how he could go about his promise in his second term, right? One thing that he said he will do is use Title 42 again. So if people have not listened to the series I did last May or June on Title 42, I would like to direct them there. Title 42, as a reminder, is a public health law. And it's a public health law that, in this interpretation, allowed CBP, specifically Border Patrol, to immediately return people to Mexico without processing them first.

Sometimes they call it catch and release, right? What it resulted in was, these are not technically deportations, but when Trump says something, I don't think he's considering the exact meanings of what he's saying, right? So if we look at Title 42 expulsions, if he's going to bring back Title 42, reaching that 1 million per year number is pretty easy in fact that happened in 2022 again under biden right so if if he considers those to be deportation so that's within his 1 million per year goal it's reasonable that he will reach to say that he will be able to reach that and he'll be able to do that with the current infrastructure

right without massively upgrading uh c, ICE, ICE detention facilities, immigration judges, all those things. Yeah. So like, if we consider those to be deportations, then one million a year is very much something that we might well see. Do you know where we're at this year? Or it hasn't been released yet? I don't know.

2022 was the last stats I could find. I linked to the cbp if people want to look at the the title 42 and title so title 8 it's the immigration law under which people are normally received right title 42 ended in may of 2023 may 11th 2023 with the end of the covid 19 emergency because the reason they were using public health law as immigration law was because of this health emergency right now obviously it was used extremely cynically for instance there weren't exemptions for vaccinated people but nonetheless that's why they were using it and when the federal emergency for covid19 ended so did biden's excuse for using title 42 that i will

link to the cbp data center in the notes so people can see title 42 versus tight late over the last few years as i pointed out last week the u the US can also fund deportations of migrants further south. And it's done this in Panama. I had a series from there last week. People hadn't listened to it. I would love them to do so. But the numbers that they've been able to achieve there are pretty low. And I don't think that's really going to meaningfully impact his target. So let's talk about what everyone is most afraid of which is mass deportation to people who are already living in the united states right that is definitely what his right-wing trolls have been sort of hyping up certainly over the last few weeks right

the idea that they are going to come to your house and find you if you're an undocumented person in the united states so to talk about this i want to talk about first of all like the real nuts and bolts of how he would be able or if he would be able to do this right and i draw very heavily here on a report by the american immigration council who did some calculations on the cost of a single ice detention right the cost of a single raid the amount of agents that will be required to meet this kind of capacity. And there are two models that they use.

And those are the models I think are most relevant. If we look at people who are in the United States without permanent legal status, we make an estimate for numbers. We're looking at about 11 million undocumented people. That's not going to be perfect. But if we use that as a ballpark, and then 2.3 million people who have entered since the end of Title 42, and they're on various forms of bail or parole or bond,

and they don't have a permanent status here either, right? So we're looking at somewhere in the region of 13 million, if Trump wanted to deport all of those people right now to do that he would need to massively expand ice detention facilities about half of isis staff aren't contrary to what you might like believe about ice kicking in people's doors and deporting them. Half of ISIS staff work for something called Homeland Security Investigations. It's not that those people don't do deportations, they do, but they mostly focus on human trafficking, drug trafficking, transnational crime.

Now, sometimes those people also do deportations. People might be familiar with the big HSI raids on certain employers who are employing a lot of undocumented people. Those still result in deportations, but that's not their primary tasking and hsi has historically preferred not to do the deportation work because they feel that that makes it very hard for them to do the other work of like monitoring human and drug trafficking because evidently migrants are going to be scared to go anywhere near hsi if they know the hsi could deport them right so they're not they're not going to talk to them now it would be very easy for trump to

retask those those agents right that would obviously undermine what is done to prevent drug trafficking and human trafficking whether or not he cares is a question that's uh yeah i don't know i think i probably have an answer for that, but I guess I'm for debate somewhat. So Trump has already called, in addition to potentially re-equipping those HSI agents, he said he wants to employ 10,000 more Border Patrol agents. Now, BP agents can do deportations, but it's not BP agents who are coming to your door in Chicago and coming after you. That's ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He's also said he wants to give Border Patrol agents a $10,000 retention bonus and a 10% raise.

Just to put it into perspective, there are 20,000 BP agents right now. So that would be about a 50% increase, right? This is not something he can do quickly. They need to go through the academy. They need to be recruited, background check etc border patrol has a lot of waivers right now so like you can we can waive requirements other law enforcement agencies would have for you to work for them if that makes sense right be it a ged or a college degree or another language or whatever they are offering waivers a lot right now they can increase that number of waivers to recruit more people right but that would still take a long time so the estimate the american immigration

council has is that to remove all of those 13 million people in that sort of in the one mass deportation as opposed to the million people a year scenario would require between 220 and 409,000 staff. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that is a lot of people.

So, I mean, like for, for comparison as to how many that actually is, the United States military active duty is about a million people. Yes. That was, that's a comparison.

Not the army, not the Navy, the military. Yeah. All of it. This would put DHS at like substantially more personnel than like the Marine Corps, right? Like, yeah. Not that people don't want to do.

It's just like it is actually, we've talked a lot about how there are not guardrails on Trump like there were last time. That is true. And that is a very realistic thing to like be worried about and scared about. But we're not just talking about guardrails. We are talking about a logistical hurdle. It is not a simple or necessarily possible thing to make an agency like that that much larger and have it actually function like, right, like just this is just physics we're talking about here. Yeah, it's the same with anything. If Cool Zone suddenly received

100 billion dollars from Jeff Be bezos and he said do anything you want with it we could not scale up to half a million employees like we have we have absolutely no capacity to handle that yeah yeah like i think what people have to remember is that every door kicking ice agent needs enablers right they need paid they need health insurance they need human resources they They need training. This would take a very long time. Sorry, it's 1.3 million or so. I think it's a little

less. That's 2017 data. So it probably is closer to a million now, but it's slightly over a million. But this is close to half. Right. Yeah, that's in addition to what they already have. Yeah. 409 plus whatever they have. It would also, of course, mean substantially increasing their investigative capacity because most deportations right now when ice arrests someone happen when someone else has already arrested that person

so like the person who's in detention federally or on a state level for something else that they did and they're undocumented that's when ice can take them and deport them right so they'd have to also increase their ability to search out and find people not saying they can't but you can't take you know fucking tim pool bring him into ice he's not going to instantly know how to find people where to find people right so like this this will take time there's a practical constraint on him doing this even if there aren't other constraints within the balance of powers. So Stephen Miller, dude with the giant head. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to be more specific. When we talk about like conservatives who are about to come into power,

who have like a weirdly huge head. Yeah. Okay. That's like, find me a Californian who has strong opinions on gluten. Yeah. That's me. I'm pro-gluten. Yeah. Yeah. So Stephen Miller is, he is the guy who's crafted a lot of Trump's nefarious border policies, right? It was Miller who, who took out title 42. And I want to talk about this a bit later. One thing that Miller did effectively, I don't want to say well, because it was objectively

horrible, but one thing that Miller was good at was finding this obscure piece of public health law and mobilizing it against migrants, right? I think if you'd spoken to me in 2015 and said, what do you think Trump's going to do against migrants? I wouldn't have said, oh, it'll be Title 42 of the United States Code, you know, that regulates public health. He or people within his team were very effective at finding that and using that effective enough that the biden administration kept it for three years after the trump administration did it for one year right and so miller could find some some

niche kind of law what he wants to do is use the national guard from cooperative states right yeah and to use a national guard from cooperative states in states that are not cooperative and where local law enforcement would not cooperate right so some quote-unquote sanctuary states and there's probably an overstatement they don't in theory refer undocumented people they arrest to ice for deportation right now what federal fusion centers do is allow for that even if it is a sanctuary state, actually. But in theoretical terms, a sanctuary state would not at least contact ICE about every undocumented person they arrested. Right. So Miller's plan is to use the National Guard again.

Like, that's not what the National Guard does right now. They're not really trained up for doing that either. Right. I've seen plenty of national guard folks on the border i fuck what i'd say it's a bunch of scared 18 year olds right who are trying to get money for robert and i have met uh texas national guard soldiers on the border they're kids they're kids yeah now to be fair that's not saying they're they're like innocent or inherent like every group of soldiers who has done any good or bad thing, and often, but usually both at the same time,

is a bunch of scared 18-year-old kids. Yes. That's been the case for 10,000 years. Yeah, that's true. Anytime you have conflict reporting news, it's always shocking how young people are. It's always just like, oh, okay, all wars are fought by children. There's no non-child soldiers. With the exception of, I mean mean that is the weird thing about the ukraine war right yeah like i remember the first time i wound up at the front there it was

like oh this is actually it is actually old men fighting this war old men who repeatedly told me it's either me or my kid shows up here and i already fucking lost my soul in afghanistan yes like i literally had that interview with people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy to me people who fought in Afghanistan and are fighting again. Yeah. I mean, I think those guys are probably out now.

I'm talking about like in 2015. Yeah, I think 2024, it's 40 years later. I'm sure they're too old now, but. Robert, talking of being too old, I unfortunately am not too old to be obliged to transition to advertisement. So that's what we're going to do. You're never too old for that, James.

In fact, the older you get, it's kind of like how if you reread Moby Dick at different points in your life, it's a completely different novel. Every 10 years, different book. Same thing is true with Ulysses. And the same thing is true with these advertisements. That's right. Save them, record them on your home device. And every couple of months, listen, and you'll you'll learn something new from Chumba Casino every time.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

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German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. And I hope you've downloaded that Chumbo Casino advert for later. In the event of a grid down scenario, you could have a whole library of those to listen to. So talking of obscure legislations we did, right? Trump and his team have mentioned this thing called the alien enemies act it sounds like alien ant farm but it's not in

any way related sadly not nearly as good as a for one thing it's cover of smooth criminal terrible terrible yeah no nowhere near the same standard that's a joke for people who are over 30 yes anyone who tries to dance to that alien ant farm song today not only has to think about the fact that michael jackson was definitely a pedophile but also their knees no longer work yeah it's a lose-lose just sadly shuffling along properly moonwalking while crying uh taking ibuprofen. No, I was at a streetlight show in Portland that was all millennials.

And every time, like the pit was crazy, but also it sounded like a cement mixer when everybody's knees got going. They're doling out ibuprofen on the way out. So you're going to need this tomorrow, Sandra. ibuprofen on the way out so you're going to need this tomorrow so the alien enemies act it hasn't been used since the united states used it in the second world war for internment camps right which at least for many of us is a part of national shame i guess like a pretty terrible fucking thing that united states did obviously for some folks in the trump administration this is something that they're kind of aspiring to i guess trump has said that he would like to use this to deport gang members that's not really what it's for and like even sources within dhs have pointed out that they

would have to prove that these migrants were sent by a foreign government right or someone that the u.s is at war with this is going to be hard because like if we look at venezuelans who are representing a larger and larger proportion of migrants since the elections there they will actively shit talk the government of their country at the first opportunity and i have met hundreds if not thousands of venezuelan migrants in california and in the dalian gap and uh yeah you're not going to find people who who you can plausibly say were sent by maduro that way yeah but miller's pretty good at finding these obscure laws and ways of doing things so we would be foolish to write this off entirely but i don't think that

will make up the bulk of these mass deportations so i want to go to that american immigration council report which i'll link in the show notes right assuming a million deportations a year which is what jd vance said to the new york times that's the sort of steady deportation scenario as opposed to the mass deportation of 13 million people scenario which a steady one is is more realistic in terms of practicality right the cost of that assuming that 20 of undocumented people decided to leave on their own would be about 88 billion a year which is a large amount of money but we'll talk in a little bit about what you could get with that money a one-off mass deportation would cost about 315 billion the detention costs alone for that one-off mass deportation of 11 to 13 million people would be 167.8 billion dollars which is probably why

private prison group geo groups stock soared this week right if trump wants to deport people the average deportee is detained for 59 days before they're deported and so they are going to massively have to increase their capacity. Right now, their current detention contract includes a minimum of 29,790 beds. Between increases and other facilities they have access to, in early 2024, according to the American Immigration Council, they detained 39,000 people. Astute listeners will notice that 11,039,000 are quite, quite disparate as numbers go. uh, yeah, I mean,

you're talking about a huge percentage of like, if we'll get into this later, but in California, Texas and Florida, it's between five and 6% of the population are undocumented. Right. Um, you're talking about building prison cities.

If you, if you were to detain that many people in one fell swoop again, that takes time. But in this this case it's private sector actors like geo group they can tend to move a little bit faster right so yeah to put that cost in terms of things that the government could do with the money instead right a decade of 1 million deportations a year means foregoing 40 450 elementary schools or 2.9 million new homes or funding the head start program for 79 years a single year of mass deportation would cost nearly twice the national institute of health's annual budget or 18 times the global annual expenditure on cancer research so i guess that's shit that we could have instead but that's not all because undocumented

households contrary to what you might have heard pay taxes and if we deported every undocumented person in the united states we look at 2022 numbers undocumented households paid 46.8 billion in federal taxes and 29.3 billion in state and local taxes that's a huge amount of tax revenue foregone right absolutely yeah that again that won't be the end of it because some industries like construction and agriculture rely heavily on undocumented labor and if you're worried about the cost of your groceries now if people voted for donald trump because their eggs cost more shit will cost an awful lot more if we deport all the undocumented people working in agriculture, right? Sectors of that industry do not function economically without underpaid migrant labor.

And this is something that migrants are very aware of, actually. I broadcasted an interview with one of them last week where they know that they will be underpaid because they're undocumented but they still think that that's worth it for them to be safe right so forgoing that i don't think trump has not proposed a solution to this right like these sort of this long-form thinking is not what he does certainly in his speeches but that would have a massive impact on the economy what he would also need to do is persuade the countries that these migrants come from to take them back. And that has historically been something that has been extremely difficult. The State Department doesn't see the sort of process of persuading people to accept migrants as really within its remit. And it certainly sort of bristled at having to do this.

and it certainly sort of bristled at having to do this the last trump administration i think a mass deportation like this it would trigger some nations refusing to take people back for instance venezuela right venezuela is already not taking people back from panama you at the u.s funds deportations for panama venezuela and panama ceased relations after the election in venezuela and panama rightly claiming that that was a fraudulent election. And as a result, Panama is now looking for a third country to deport these people too. If the US attempted to deport potentially millions of people to Venezuela again,

there's no guarantee that Maduro has to accept them back, right? I can hear a lot of people saying, how is that allowed? To not accept to take them back? Yeah. I mean, international law is is like it's a unicorn like you know if everyone agrees that they see it and they see it but it's not real right

so like who is going to make them i guess like like whether it's allowed or not is kind of immaterial maduro is not allowed to steal the election right you're not allowed to abuse human rights migrants are allowed to cross any country they want and claim asylum anywhere that they feel safe but like here we are so yeah in theory the country should accept its citizens back in practice will it i don't know certainly it becomes like a bigger issue when you have millions of people right and if we have millions of people deported back then like if we can't deport them where are we going to detain them that gets back to the cost of detentions right talking of costs should probably cover the costs of our podcasting set up here by by pivoting to adverts again yeah

hey i'm jack these thomas the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works

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This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme, laughs, and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias

Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to the leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real

people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. We are back. And for the final segment here, I want to talk about who Trump could pursue

with these deportations, right? There's two major groups. The obvious starting point would be the 2.3 million people who crossed between January of 2023 and April of this year before Biden signed his asylum ban. To be precise, that's 2,264,830. Those people don't have permanent immigration status those are the people who you've heard from on this podcast who were in hakumba right the people who we've interviewed for the last year and a bit now they have various immigration status but

none of them are permanent none of them have permanent residency all of them are obviously registered right they normally have a notice to appear in court which would make them easy to find and potentially easy to deport the other group of people are the undocumented migrants who have been here for longer than that many of them have most have been in the country for more than a decade they're working they often have citizen children right because of birthright citizenship most of them pay taxes most of these people have some form of revocable legal status so that might be something called a temporary protected status we talked about a temporary protected status last week as well but it applies to people who are already in the country when it's granted and it allows them to stay for a designated period of time while it's not safe to deport them to their

home country let's say there's been a war or of time. While it's not safe to deport them to their home country, let's say there's been a war or a natural disaster, right? It's not safe to deport them, but it gets renewed two months before the end of that period. As I say, it renews every 18 months, and you find out two months before the end of that period if it's not going to be renewed. If they didn't renew those TPSs, those people could either change status

or would become undocumented right the tps has existed since 1990 and there are about 860 000 people on tps right now the other major category that people will probably be more familiar with are dreamers people who came to the united states as children and are undocumented but they benefit from something called darker deferred action for childhood arrivals and about 834,000 young people benefit from this, which allows them to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. Trump did try and go after this in his previous term in 2018. He ended up in a two-year court battle, which sort of finished up with NAACP versus Trump, and that ran out the

clock on his term and Biden reinstated DACA. But again, because people have to register for DACA, their whereabouts are easier for someone like ICE to potentially find. Then after that, we have people who entered without being detected. We have people who overstayed their visas. Those people might be harder to find, right? The model of the undocumented migrant people have in their head is that comes across the border with carpet shoes sneaks past a bp checkpoint and then lives in the united states without ever encountering migration authorities that's actually not the majority model but those people do exist and they would be harder for ice to find

potentially trump has also vowed to end parole programs that allow Ukrainians and Afghans to enter the USA and work. I would think that some of those would be pretty unpopular. People have been much more broadly in solidarity with Ukrainian migrants than they have with other migrants from other parts of the world, they'll say. But it would be an easy one again for him to end, right? The last thing he's really said he wanted to do

is to end birthright citizenship yeah that is i spoke about this before in our agenda 47 episodes that's pretty clear in the 14th amendment they have some kind of fringes on the flag legal theory around this but like i would think that that would require a constitutional amendment but who knows because he might have both houses and the Supreme Court on his side. So he might just be able to get away with doing that. This obviously wouldn't rescind citizenship from people who previously have children who are citizens. Talking of people who have children who are citizens, there are about 4 million mixed-status families in the United States.

So this deportation plan could potentially separate parents from children, children from from parents children from their older parents who they take care of it could destroy these families right deportations always destroy families i've seen this happening myself and it's horrible the states where this would most likely happen the states with the highest undocumented population in california texas and florida california thus far retains its sanctuary policies. Texas and Florida very much do not, right? Yeah. And so those would be the states where there will be the highest risk of this happening.

That's between 5% and 6% of their population. And that's kind of where I want to finish up today. I've got some more stuff I wanted to say about his border policy, but I think I'm going to save that for another episode because the border and immigration are different things. And I think sometimes this is something that a lot of legacy media doesn't understand. They have immigration reporters who report on immigration law, the stuff I've spoken about today.

But the border is not somewhere that they go and it's not something that they cover very well. If you've been listening for a while, you'll know that I've spent a lot of time at the border on the ground in the mountains in the deserts and uh that's something that we've covered in great depth here and i'm really happy that listeners have a really complete understanding of it would california actually be able to enforce being a sanctuary state or no yes in the it's law enforcement doesn't have to call ice right the federal government cannot compel local law enforcement state law enforcement to do its work that is very well established again like nothing's off the cards when when you have both uh houses of congress and the uh in the supreme court but again that would take time and it would take a court battle

so what they can do now is not report those people, right? Not say, hey, we got someone here. He came in because we found him with a bag of weed. He's undocumented. You know, he was driving 35 in a 30. He's undocumented. These are things that people who are undocumented have to worry about, right?

Like for those of you who don't have undocumented folks in your life, like it's a speeding ticket. It's the most minor. It's not paying a parking ticket and ending up in court, right? Like this shit is so minor to so many people, but it could tear someone's life apart. And so I want to like finish up by saying that,

yeah, Texas and Florida are going to be the places where we see this. Yeah. 5% of the population is a large amount of your population. saying that yeah texas and florida are going to be the places where we see this yeah five percent of the population is a large amount of your population if he even attempts half of that people are going to see this it's going to happen in your community now i'm not saying he will but if it does like the time to start organizing to protect people you care about is now be that with donations to groups like Alotrolalo,

who have successfully sued the Trump and Biden administrations for migrants' rights. Be that with organizing such that your undocumented friends don't end up in court because they couldn't pay a parking ticket, right? Even if that means you paying someone, giving someone 50 bucks for a parking ticket so that it doesn't ruin the rest of their life. Whatever it is, the way that we prevent this is through strong communities we have to start putting those now i know we've said this a lot this week but we're probably going to say a lot for the next three months like a lot of people have reached out to me since the trump election which was two days but also like seven years ago because that's how time works saying that they want to participate in mut aid at the border i would love for you to come and join us of course i would and like i

think people have heard a lot about a mutual aid setup because it's something i do a lot but that i don't want you to come here and do mutual aid tourism like i want you to come here and understand and learn what we do and then do it yourself or just do it yourself like there was a time when this didn't exist and people started it, right? And you can start it too. And I'm not going to tell you the specifics of what I think you should do because I don't know. I don't know what the legal environment will be. I don't know what the legal environment will be in your state, but whatever the legal environment is, it will be better if we have strong and cohesive communities to look after one another,

right? If you're looking to donate your money, I've said it before, Alotrolado, where I would suggest it, it's A-L-O-T-R-O-L-A-D-O.org. They've done really valuable work in defending migrants' rights in court. Haitian Bridge Alliance would be another great example of that. Will you link that? Yep. I'll put them both in the show example of that. Will you link that? Yep. I'll put them both in the show notes. Yeah. But the way we confront this is together.

And it's super important that now in the next three months, if there are undocumented people in your life, that you check in with them, right? That you talk with them about what the best plan is. We don't know what's going to happen. I've outlined some scenarios here. None of them may happen,

right? We don't know yet, but we have these three months and we'd be foolish not to use them yep yeah talk to your friends begin organizing the solution is not despair the solution is community and i know it can be really easy to spare and if you're listening and you are undocumented i understand how petrifying this is. And just know that like, we're all thinking of you and hopefully there are people in your life who are there to help you and to help you get through a difficult time.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral.

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Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was,

should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.