The Daily Signal - #486: Can Trump Really Deport Millions of Illegal Immigrants?

Episode Date: June 18, 2019

Right now, there are a million illegal immigrants who have exhausted all their legal appeals--and yet still are living in the country, illegally, partially thanks to lackluster deportation efforts by the Obama administration. Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, joins us to discuss what Immigration and Customs Enforcement can do, and how. We also cover these stories:•Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan steps down, and Army Secretary Mark Esper is named the new acting defense secretary. •Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compares migrant detention centers to concentration camps. •Parkland student Kyle Kashuv reiterates how sorry he is for using a racist term, after Harvard rescinds his admission. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, June 19th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. President Trump is kicking ice into action, saying that illegal immigrants will be deported starting next week. But what exactly does the president mean by that? and is it feasible? Today, heritage expert Hans von Spikovsky will join us to explain what can be done.

Plus, the Supreme Court hands down new decisions, including one in a religious liberty case. Heritage legal expert Tom Jipping will unpack the details. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes, and please subscribe and encourage others to subscribe so that we can keep growing. Now, on to our top news. Is there about to be a crackdown on illegal immigrants? President Trump tweeted, next week, ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens

who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in. Mexico, using their strong immigration laws, is doing a very good job of stopping people long before they get to our southern border. Guatemala is getting ready to sign a safe third agreement. The only ones who won't do anything are the Democrats in Congress. They must vote to get rid of the loopholes and fix asylum.

If so, border crisis will end quickly. End quote. We'll talk to Heritage Foundation expert Hans von Spikoski later in the show about how those deportations might work. Meanwhile, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, is comparing the holding of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. in camps to the Holocaust in a video she posted on social media. The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. And that is exactly what they are.

They are concentration camps. And if that doesn't bother you, I don't, I don't know, I like, we can have, okay, whatever. I want to talk to the people that are concerned, enough with humanity to say that we should not, that never again means something. Well, President Trump announced on Monday that a thousand U.S. troops will be sent to the Middle East. That decision comes amid growing tensions with Iran. The U.S. is blaming Iran for an attack last week on two civilian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, which forced crew members to abandon ship. The U.S. government has since released video evidence, which it says shows Iranian Revolutionary

guard members planting mines on the side of the oil tankers. ABC reports that most of the U.S. forces being sent to the Middle East are intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and force protection units. Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan will no longer seek confirmation to become the defense secretary. President Trump tweeted, Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who has done a wonderful job, has decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family. I thank Pat for his outstanding service and will be naming Secretary of the Army, Mark Esper, to be the new acting Secretary of Defense. I know Mark and have no doubt

he will do a fantastic job, end quote. Shanahan's decision to step down comes after media reports about alleged domestic violence incidents in his family with conflicting accounts. Well, while the president is looking to crack down on illegal immigration, New York's governor, Andrew Quartz, Cuomo has a different idea. He wants to give out driver's licenses to those who are here illegally. On Monday, the New York Senate passed a bill allowing illegal immigrants to apply for driver's licenses in New York, and the governor says he intends to sign it. The bill would make New York the 13th state to grant licenses to illegal immigrants. Parkland gun rights activists and former student Kyle Kashav will no longer be attending Harvard in the fall after the Ivy League changed their mind on admitting Kachov

after a message he sent as a 16-year-old, which used racist terms, was revealed. Kashv spoke to Fox News on the matter. Well, at that time, it was really a friend group where who could say the most shocking thing and most extreme thing for the sake of shock value. And I'm extremely sorry for it. And I wish I could have taken it back, but I can't.

All I can do right now is seek to write this wrong. And I know that forgiveness isn't given, it's earned. And I know that, you know, the person who wrote those things is not who I am today. How do we know that? Because you certainly sound heartfelt, but you want to get something. You want to get into Harvard or get into another school? And how do we know that you're not just saying, oh, I didn't mean it? That's a fair question.

Because at every single possibility that I could have, ever since I become a public figure, I've condemned racism. I've condemned hatred. And that's why we've seen the alt-right come after me so hard because I've condemned them for their racism and further hatred. The Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High graduate also tweeted about it. Quote, throughout its history, Harvard's faculty has included slave owners, segregationists, bigots, and anti-Semites. If Harvard is suggesting that growth isn't possible and that our past defines our future,

then Harvard is an inherently racist, institution. But I don't believe that. I believe that institutions and people can grow. I've said that repeatedly. In the end, this isn't about me. It's about whether we live in a society in which forgiveness is possible or mistakes brand you as irredeemable as Harvard has decided for me. Well, up next we'll talk to heritage immigration expert Hans von Spikovsky about the president's deportation plans. Do you own an Amazon Echo? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily Alexa Flash briefing. It's easy to do. Just open your Amazon Alexa app,

go to settings, and select Flash Briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your Flash briefing so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. Can President Trump really deport millions of illegal immigrants, as he suggested in a tweet this week? Joining us to discuss is Hans von Spikosky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Thanks for joining us, Hans. Well, thanks for having me. So we don't really know much about what President Trump is proposing to do. This came out in a tweet and we haven't seen additional details. So we don't know with this effect only recent illegal immigrants, illegal immigrants who

have been here a while. But just generally speaking, how do deportations work right now and how do they decide who to prioritize? Well, I'll tell you, I suspect that what he's probably referring to is the fact that there are over a million unenforced deportation order. sitting over at the Department of Homeland Security, if you can believe it. And these are deportation orders issued by federal immigration judges. So these are on aliens who have completely exhausted the legal process. You know, they've had a hearing. A judge has heard their claims that they're entitled to be in the U.S.

And after reviewing all of the evidence, immigration judges have said, no, you're not eligible to be in the U.S., and they've issued a final order saying, this person can be deported and basically immediately removed from the U.S. Now, if you're wondering how there could possibly be a million unenforced orders like this, well, they just kind of built up over at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration. Because what happens is the immigration judges send their order over to DHS. And it's then up to DHS to DHS to enforce the order, pick up the illegal alien, put them on a plane,

whatever, to get them out of the country. And the Obama administration, you know, wasn't really interested in enforcing our immigration laws, and they didn't do very much about these deportation orders. So if the president wants to do something immediately, like said, there's a million illegal aliens with removal orders that can be sent out of the country immediately if DHS can find them, pick them up,

and put them on transportation out of the country. So why haven't they been deported? in the last couple years. I would just assume that, you know, President Trump comes in. He's elected. It's an obvious thing to do. Well, yeah, but they've been working on them. I mean, as you know, the president for the past two years has made a priority of getting

criminal illegal aliens out of the country. And by that, I don't mean people that just broke our immigration laws, but individuals who committed crimes when they were in the United States. And there are a good number of these deportation orders. that are related to criminal illegal aliens. So they've been working on it, but they just don't have enough resources to do this quickly and effectively. And as you know, one of the reasons for that is the president's been pushing Congress to give him more money for all kinds of things. And this is one of the things that he needs to get more money for.

So what are some of the obstacles? Is it sometimes hard to track down these people who are supposed to be deported? Yeah, okay, so what causes the pain points? Yeah, I mean, some of it is it's hard to track them down because, as you know, the interior United States, we are a very big country. And for an Iliolian who wants to disappear using an assumed name and trying not to do anything that would get them on the government's radar,

it's easy to disappear. So finding these folks can be difficult. It's also made difficult by the fact that, as you know, there are sanctuary cities, unfortunately, now all over the country. And one way of finding these folks is, particularly criminal aliens, is they tend to be repeat criminals. And if they're arrested for committing a local crime, if it's a sanctuary city, well, the law enforcement there isn't going to call DHS and tell them, look, we've got a criminal illegal alien here. you please come pick them up and get them out of the country. In fact, you all, as you know, saw that not too long ago, the U.S. attorney in Boston criminally indicted and arrested a state court judge

who helped an illegal alien who was in her courtroom for a local drug charge when she found out there was an ICE agent there to detain him. And so he could be removed from the country. She instructed her bailiff to sneak him out. the back door of the courthouse. So when you have things like that going on, it makes it even more difficult for DHS to find these illegal aliens so they can remove them. So what happens in cases where you've got a child who is born here is a U.S. citizen, but the parents are here illegally? Well, that does make the situation much more difficult.

I frankly think what ought to happen in that situation is that the child should go with the parent back to their native country. And if and when the child turns 18, that child can decide whether they want to stay in their native land with their parents or come to the U.S. and become a U.S. citizen. Now, I'll tell you, I actually think our current policy of birthright citizenship is an incorrect interpretation of the 14th Amendment and the Constitution. I think we should change that. But, I mean, that is the way the government currently treats individuals

who are born to parents who are illegally in the country. And would that policy have to change? in order for the kids to be sent with the parents back home? I think so, yeah. But look, to me, it's a matter of what parent would want to leave their child in a foreign country. So of those who have exhausted all the means, the judges have said you can't stay here, are any of them visa overstays or is this all immigration that from the get-go was illegal? No, a lot of it is visa overstays.

In fact, look, the southern border is a real problem, particularly because the numbers have been steadily climbing of folks trying to get across the illegally. But the estimates are that probably upwards of 40% of the illegal aliens who are in the country are visa overstays. So that is a – what that tells you is we have to not only have better security at the border, but we have to have better security in the interior of the United States. So some are saying that it's unrealistic to say that millions could be deported

say that DHS and ICE have all the money and resources that they could possibly want and need. And say you take the maybe three or four million illegal immigrants who are the most prime candidates for deportation. How long would that operation take? I don't know how long it would take, but I'll tell you something else that the federal government ought to do and has not done fully the way it should. And that is, look, the vast majority of aliens who in this country illegally are here for economic reasons, right? They're here to earn money. They send huge amounts of remittances back to their native countries.

What we have to do is make it as difficult as possible for them to actually work and earn money. Because if that happens, then they'll self-deport. And what that means is that the Justice Department needs to spend a lot more time and effort in going after employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. And all it would take, I think, is a number of... of cases like that in various parts of the country to scare other employers who are knowingly hiring illegal aliens. And we're not talking about employers who don't realize that someone has used false identification documents. And we're talking about employers who know somebody's illegal, but they hire them anyway. If you cut off the job prospects and employment for illegal aliens,

that would cause many, many of them to self-deport. And that in conjunction with increased enforcement, I think, would severely diminish the problem we have. Are you talking about E-Verify or some other measure short of that that could be done? Well, what I'm talking about is the DHS, for example, does audits of employers to ensure that they are properly checking the status of individuals. because under federal law, all employers have to get certain identification documents from individuals so they can establish, one, their identity, and two, that they're either a U.S. citizen or they're an alien who's legally in the U.S. and has a permit to work. And those audits ought to be that there need to be more of them. And when they find employers who clearly are hiring illegal aliens and know they're doing, and they know it,

Those folks need to be prosecuted by the Justice Department. So we're going through another new cycle where, for lack of a better term, people are freaking out over the camps in which illegal immigrants and migrants coming over the border are being held. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to them as being akin to concentration camps. But, you know, a big factor in deportations, of course, is catch and release, the policy in which, you know, people are released after they cross the board. order and asked to show up to a court date. And I forgot the exact stats, but the numbers show a lot of people never show up for their court date, which is what they need to do to be in this country legally. So how does Ketch and release in these camps? How does this all play into the bigger picture and bigger issue of deportation? Well, the problem with the catch and release policy is that once

you release folks, they disappear into the interior of the country. And a majority of them won't show up for their scheduled immigration court hearing. So the more we can do to secure the border, particularly on the southern border, to keep people from getting in, the less will have to catch and release. Now, you know, one of the things the president asked Congress for was more money to put in more detention space because the numbers coming in are overwhelming the number of beds and facilities that DHS has. And again, Democrats in Congress have refused to provide that. I have to say I find it personally just insulting and so unfair for Representative Ocasio-Cortez to compare the detention facilities, which are run very well by DHS, to compare them to concentration camps is historically and factually just wrong. And it's insulting for her to do that.

And I say that as someone whose parents met in a refugee camp in Europe at DHS. end of World War II. My mother grew up in Nazi Germany. We know what concentration camps look at and to compare the detention facilities the DHS has to concentration camps is just completely and totally wrong. All right. Well, I think we'll leave it there. But Hans, thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast. Sure. Thanks for having me. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation. We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. Well, this month, the Supreme

Court has been releasing decisions from its summer term, and one of those cases has been years in the making. It's a religious liberty case out of Oregon. And here to discuss it is Thomas Chipping, senior legal fellow here at the Heritage Foundation. Tom, thanks for being back on. Thanks for having me. So this case is Sweet Cakes by Melissa versus Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. And it involves a married couple named Aaron and Melissa Klein, who we've covered in the past here at the Daily Signal. They owned a cake shop called Sweet Cakes by Melissa. They were sued by a gay couple over a claim of discrimination. The state court found against them, fined them $135,000.

They appealed to the Supreme Court. How does this case play out? Well, this case is very similar to another case that you've covered that the Supreme Court did address, and that's the Masterpiece Cake Shop case out of Colorado. And the issue there, as in this new case and a few others, is whether your religious beliefs allow you an exemption from basically generally applicable laws like anti-discrimination laws. In the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, the state agency also ruled, against the cake maker, but really evidenced a lot of religious hostility, bigotry.

So the Supreme Court said, look, that was unfair in the way that they handled that case and sent it back to be re-decided. It wasn't a victory or a clear decision on the underlying issue. Everybody wants to know from the Supreme Court, can your religious beliefs exempt you from laws like anti-discrimination laws. The Supreme Court has not yet answered that question. I think the reason they sent this case back is because the state court ruled before the masterpiece cake shop ruling.

So the Supreme Court wants, I think the Supreme Court knows they're going to get these cases back, and they want them when they come back to have been decided all on the same page. They want the state agency or the state court to have approached and decided that. the case in light of the Supreme Court's new precedent in that masterpiece cake shop case. So it's tentative. It's a step. It's not a final decision.

Everybody's waiting for that. That may be a while coming. But that's why the Supreme Court sent this case back to the Oregon courts. So in the Jack Phillips case, which of course is the case, the Supreme Court did actually rule on 7-2, there was some pretty extreme stuff happening. You know, a state commissioner compared Jack Phillips to the Nazis. for refusing to make cakes. I'm not as familiar with Aaron and Melissa Klein's case, but as I recall, there wasn't anything that egregious.

Correct me if I'm wrong. So if that is the case, how is the Oregon court going to decide this any differently in light of masterpiece? If I had to guess, I would say they're not going to. They're going to decide it the same way. I think you're right, the record or at least the reporting on it and what we're aware of,

the state agency did not, was not as hostile to the Klein's religion as the Colorado agency was to Jack Phillips. So I think the other thing that's the U.S. Supreme Court is waiting to see is how will lower courts interpret and apply their decision? How will they read it? You can read it two, three different ways. Is it just, you know, unless there's such religious hostility, we're fine? Is it, you know, to be applied in some different way. Again, I think the U.S. Supreme Court wants these cases when they come back to all be on the same page and they want to know how are the lower courts kind of implementing the Masterpiece Cake Shop decision from last year. That will help them

when these cases come back to hopefully render a final decision. You mentioned that a lot of these rulings that are made on the basis of religious hostility, kind of avoid the underlying issue. Is there a concern that, you know, the masterpiece ruling could end up meaning in the future, you know, state commissions can rule against cake bakers as long as they're really nice about it, that they can just. Yes, there's a very real risk of that. That could very well be how lower courts see the masterpiece cake shop decision, that it's simply a rule that when you make a decision, you have to do so in a way that appears neutral. but behind that neutrality, you can apply all of the anti-religious bias that you want. That would be very unfortunate.

That's why people are waiting for a decision on the underlying issue, which I think, you know, will be coming. It's a question the Supreme Court hasn't yet answered, but they definitely will have to do so. Because last year, even in another case in Washington State involving a florist, same issue. She didn't want to provide her product for a same. sex wedding. The Washington Supreme Court ruled against her. The U.S. Supreme Court sent it back, you know, the same situation. So there are a number of these cases and more to come. And so that's why we need a final decision on that underlying legal issue. And that floor is Baronel Sutzman. She's asking the Supreme Court again to hear it, I believe, right? Yes. And does this mean

they're probably not going to hear it? Not necessarily. I mean, they have, even in the Klein's case out of Oregon, and we don't exactly know why, the Supreme Court scheduled it for one of their weekly conferences 10 different times before they finally made a decision about what to do with it. The Supreme Court has the option of, you know, delaying consideration because other things are happening in other courts. If I were the Supreme Court, I'd probably want to have this Oregon case decided again by the Oregon courts. and then appealed back before I jumped into the issue again. It doesn't make much sense to be deciding, you know,

these sort of piecemeal cases on the same issue, even though they're all going to come back. And they do have the option kind of from an administrative point of view to do it that way, and they probably will. So how does the new composition of the court affect this? When we had the masterpiece cake shop ruling last year, it was Anthony Kennedy was still on the bench. And now we've got Kavanaugh in his place.

It looks like conservatives have a stronger-ish, 5-4 majority. But what, I mean, how does that affect? Does that really make much of a difference on these kinds of cases? Well, it's hard to tell, again, as far as the underlying substantive issue. Yeah. It was a fairly easy decision given the record in Colorado when you're comparing someone's religious beliefs to Nazis. It's not hard to say that that's biased, that a government commission that's doing. that as being unfair to people of faith, it's harder to predict what the decision on the underlying

issue is going to be. And it also depends on what that issue is. The Supreme Court has the option to, you know, take an issue that might be appealed to them and maybe change it a little bit or adjust it in a different direction. These cases, even though they involve similar facts, sometimes when they appeal to the Supreme Court, the issue that they say they want the Supreme Court to address might be a little bit different. In this particular case, the Klein case out of Oregon, they had raised the issue of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and how that underlying decision or the Supreme Court decision underlying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, you know, applies whether that ought to be

overruled. So it depends on the way in which. that case gets to the Supreme Court. They do have a lot of options. Okay. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Tom. Well, we'll leave it there for today. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a rating in iTunes to give us feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow.

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