The Daily Signal - Here’s How to Deport Over 10 Million People

Episode Date: December 1, 2024

Lora Ries, Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, joins Bradley Devlin on “The Signal Sitdown,” a Daily Signal original podcast series, to discuss exactly how President-Elect Donald Trump might execute his “mass deportation” program.  You can listen to “The Signal Sitdown” wherever podcasts are heard 🎙️ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the Nissan Black Friday event where you can... Wait, wait. Isn't it like a month long now? Nissan Black Friday Month? Does that work? It's the Nissan Black Friday Month event. On remaining 2025 Rogan Centra, get 0% financing. Plus, get $1,000 Nissan bonus on kicks models.

This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. Because it's about power. More people in their districts, for example, means more congressional power based on the census and the head count and apportionment and redistricting. And then, in turn, presidential electoral votes. California has more representatives in the U.S. Congress than it should because they count everybody. And yet everybody isn't supposed to vote in federal elections.

Only U.S. citizens are supposed to vote in U.S. federal elections. Thank you so much for tuning into the Signal Sitdown, but before we get to the interview, we'd love it if you'd hit that like and subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you may be joining us. And please remember to give us a five-star review because we love your feedback. Remember, it's your government, and together we'll expose how it really works and how to affect real change.

Without further ado, here's the interview. Laura Reese, welcome to the Signal Sitdown. Now, I think it's really important. I haven't done this in other episodes, have people, have guests open up with a bio. But you've spent 30 years in government and the private sector and at think tanks working on the immigration issue. So today you're at the Heritage Foundation. But over this 30-year career, where have you been?

What brought you those places? Well, I got interested in the immigration issue in college. Went straight to law school. And out of law school, I started here in D.C. with the Justice Department at the Board of Immigration Appeals, then went over to the then Immigration and Naturalization Service to be a trial attorney doing deportation proceedings. Went to the Hill, worked House Judiciary Committee.

It was there when 9-11 happened, and so helped stand up DHS and went over there to do immigration policy and some operations. Private sector, and then came back to DHS during the Trump administration, before I joined Heritage at the beginning of 2020. And you had a unique privilege to work on that first Trump transition team. So often we get caught up in who's going to be ex-cabinet secretary or who's going to be leading all these very important government agencies

and those picks are very important. But what I think people don't understand is the scale of what a president-elect, whether it's Donald Trump or Joe Biden, has to do to be prepared to enter the office on January 20th. Through presidential appointments or through proxies, there's going to be, you know, between 9,000 to 15,000 individuals appointed for the next administration. We all have somewhat of an idea, the high-level conversations that happen when Trump is picking Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, for example. But we don't really know how those middle and high-level conversations that happen when Trump is picking Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, for example. but we don't really know how those middle and high ranking but not as public picks happen. You've been on the inside. How does that work?

Well, as you said, the president-elect will choose cabinet members and perhaps one, maybe even two layers down, depending on the issue, depending on the department, depending on how many political appointees might go into a department or to an agency, and then largely turns it over to that cabinet member and other very high-level political appointees working with what's called a White House liaison, which is a political appointee assigned to every department who goes through resumes and recommendations and does interviews to place political appointees throughout the department, also working with the White House PPO presidential personnel office, again, to go through resumes, to vet, to do interviews, recommendations, things like that.

And vetting, it seems like is so much more important for conservatives than liberals because so much of the federal bureaucracies dominated by folks who share the priors of the Democratic Party. Let's just be frank about it, right? you know, how do you think the Trump team has recalibrated in 2024 compared to 2016 when it's looking at its personnel problems or looking at how to fill out these administration positions? Well, I've noticed a few different key differences from 2016. One is geography. In 2016, we had a Trump transition pre-election here in Washington, Then when he won in 2016, we had the post-election transition where then some of the campaign staff came in. We moved locations.

We were relying on GSA, General Services Administration, in the government for facilities, IT and the like. And that created a host of problems. The media was always right outside. they were tracking who was coming in and going out. There was concerns of leaks. There was concerns with the IT. And so this time he's staying mostly in Mar-a-Lago

and having people go down there for interviews and for brainstorming and collaborating and the like. Also, he seems to be much more ready in terms of picking personnel. I mean, he's had the benefit of doing this once already. And then the other big part of this is the policy and getting the documents ready for day one, whether that's executive orders or draft regulations, secretarial memos, etc. Yeah, talk about those day one items, right? Those executive orders that you have ready for the president to sign as soon as he's sworn in.

It feels like there's got to be a lot of coordination with the current administration to ensure that you understand the policy landscape. that you understand the political landscape well enough to make sound policy when you come into office on day one. What does the coordination look like when there's specifically like a transfer of power from a Democratic administration to a Republican administration? And maybe you can't speak to the 2024 situation, but in 2016, you had an Obama administration that frankly abused the FISA courts to spy on President Donald Trump's campaign.

and yet, you know, the Trump campaign and the Trump transition in 2016 has no choice but to rely on the Obama administration for that type of information. Similar story can be told in 2024 where the Biden DOJ has not been shy about going after its political opponents. It has not been shy about going after former President Donald Trump and now the president elect. And yet there has to be coordination between. this Democratic administration in the incoming Republican administration. Yeah, so in 2016, each department would have a person in charge of transition already in the government and then representatives throughout the agencies or components, as we call them, in the Department of Homeland Security, to provide briefings or kind of be the go-to person

for, in that case, the Trump transition team that was interacting with them. And so generally, the career staff that were designated for the transition would provide a briefing on major policies, budget, things like that of every component. And then in addition to that, if the president-elect's transition team wanted a briefing on a specific issue, they could request that. If they wanted follow-up data or numbers, then it was responsibility of the career staff to provide that. Frankly, right now, I don't have visibility into whether that's happening, how it's happening. I do understand that DHS has designated career staff to be on that transition team. I just don't know if those briefings are happening currently.

In 2016, do you feel like there is an element of sabotage? because someone who is on the outside, young guy in college while this was all happening, and Trump comes in with his day one agenda, signs a slew of executive orders. A lot of them targeted at your specific issue area, immigration. All of a sudden, court injunctions came from everywhere and all at once. Part of me feels like there was an element of sabotage almost for this Trump transition that was trying to uproot. an establishment that wanted to protect its sacred cows, right? And immigration is one of those

sacred cows. Yes, I personally felt that there were leaks that didn't need to happen, but also minders among that career transition team that were designated for different parts of DHS, if we went to have briefings or if we asked for additional briefings at perhaps one in the field offices, you know, they would send someone to join. I do think that was reported back to others, whether it was in the department or higher up. So I would agree with you. Yeah. And it's, it's, for anyone who's watched the show Veep, it's like the White House liaison is this young, nerdy, like somewhat charismatic, but like bumbling moron who coordinates between the White House and the vice president's office and other parts of the government. And it just feels like for me,

looking as, you know, turning on that Machiavelli and part of my brain, I would send the guy who doesn't do well on the performance review to go prepare the other administration who wants to uproot all of the policies that I've made over the past four or eight years or whatever. But as we turn towards the topic of immigration, big picks from President Donald Trump, or President-elect Donald Trump, Tom Holman, borders are. And Christy Noem is going to be potentially the new DHS secretary. You know Tom Homan personally. You've worked with Tom Homan in the past.

Tell us a little bit about your friend, Tom Homan. Well, he's a great pick. And it's because he has worked his way up through the ranks. So there's nothing that he asks agents and officers to do that he himself hasn't done. He started in the Border Patrol and the then INS. He was the head of enforcement and removal operations at ICE and worked his way up to be acting director of ICE. So he knows how to prioritize the resources and to prioritize who needs to be identified, who needs to be

identified, arrested first in terms of national security threats, the gang members, the aggravated convicted felons, the aliens who already have final orders of removal of which there's over a million, but have absconded throughout the country. So just a solid pick and, you know, really happy to see that. When you worked with him, what was his leadership style? I think of some, like a pick like Pete Head Seth, for example, for Secretary of Defense. Like, it's such an intriguing pick to me because it's someone who's worked really, really closely with veterans and soldiers who were on the ground over the past 10 years, but not someone who is familiar with the inner workings of the Pentagon at its highest levels. You can't say that about Tom Homan. Tom Homan

has high-level knowledge of the inner workings of DHS, while also seemingly maintaining good rapport with the men and women responsible for the day-to-day operations. You know, what was his leadership style like when you worked with him? He continued to be, you know, one of the guys, so to speak. I mean, he commanded respect, but he received that respect from the agents, whether they were out in the field or if they were detailed to the Washington headquarters office. because, again, he had done the job himself. So very accessible and very personable.

Did you, have you heard from folks on the ground since the home appointment that they're excited about it? It feels like a lot of people don't just get involved in CBP or ICE because they want to sit there and do nothing about the immigration program. Like maybe there are people who are there to earn a government check and get government benefits when they retire. but it seems like, and the guys that I know from that part of our government, are hungry to protect the American homeland from what they feel as serious threats coming across our southern border. And that's just not threats as in the real terrorist threats that come through the southern border, right? There's people from all over the world. They have no paperwork. But also just the threats to our everyday way of life. These people don't have to be gang members to suppress normal working class wages.

right like they think that it is a threat to our national security that people are coming in that could be terrorists but also that like you have a lot of young men in america who are out of work who could be making better wages and doing the work that a lot of migrants are doing right now are they they you know are you hearing from the ground like yes the morale has definitely lifted and they will soon be away be able to leave their desks unfortunately is that where they've been yes yes Secretary Mayorkas out of the gate issued a enforcement priorities memo, which basically narrowed their jobs for investigations, arrest, detention, removal to spies, terrorists, some aggravated felons, but not all.

And supposedly anyone who had entered the country illegally since November of 2020. Well, we know that wasn't the case. That leaves on the floor a lot of grounds of removability, whether you snuck across the border, whether you overstated a visa, whether you committed crimes that don't rise to the level of aggravated felon. And again, he even allowed some aggravated felons to remain. Working without authorization,

Secretary Mayorkas stopped work site enforcement. And he proudly stated publicly that, no longer would just a ground of being in the country illegally suffice to be removed, violating clearly the immigration statute. What do you think his motivation would be for doing that, right? Like, you're working for the president. You've been tasked with leading the DHS. This is, you know, of course, DHS has FEMA in it.

This is the bread and butter of the game, right? making sure that America's immigration system runs properly. And yet he left all this on the cutting room floor. What is the motivation? Well, he would tell you humanitarian reasons, helping vulnerable populations. But really, he's an open border ideologue. Joe Biden used to be more about securing the border in a border wall. He voted that way when he was a senator.

But Joe Biden sold out to the left. the radical left in terms of flinging open our borders, letting anyone in, letting them stay, including national security threats and convicted felons and et cetera, et cetera. And I don't know how Secretary of Mayorka sleeps at night. I honestly don't. So what you just suggested, and forgive me if I put words in your mouth, but like, Majorcas is just an empty suit for an ideology that is completely taken over the left. Where is that ideology coming from?

And why is it so blindly accepting of open borders? Majorcas came to the U.S. from Cuba. And he will often tell stories about coming to the U.S., about being poor, about what his parents went through, about pinching pennies to get along in the U.S. society and to try and make it here. And so I think that informs a lot of his beliefs, but it has blinded him to the reality

of what open borders inevitably leads to. So I'm of two minds of this. Part of me thinks that it's just the classic hippie liberal that says, no, no borders. Everybody should come in. Come on, man. Come to America. We love your taco trucks. We love this.

We love that. It feels like it's definitely part of it. The other thing is, I can't help notice as the Democratic Party has transformed into the party of the lower and working class and into a party of cultural elites, that they've, embraced large-scale immigration. Do you think that the corporate interests backing the Democratic Party right now are kind of pushing them in that direction? Yeah. Are they backfilling it with the hippie stuff?

It's all of the above. So, yes, there are those who are just very much, you know, no country should have borders. Anyone should be able to travel anywhere that they want, any time that they want. It shouldn't be up to the country. It should be up to the individual. There are also those who do this because it's about power. More people in their districts, for example, means more congressional power based on the census and the head count and apportionment and redistricting. And then, in turn, presidential electoral votes.

California has more representatives in the U.S. Congress than it should because they count everybody. and yet everybody isn't supposed to vote in federal elections. Only U.S. citizens are supposed to vote in U.S. federal elections. So why wouldn't you just limit headcount to U.S. citizens to determine congressional districts? And it's a zero-sum game. So if California, for example, is getting more congressional districts than it should, based on total headcount versus just U.S. citizens, another state is getting fewer. congressional districts than it should. And so our representation in Congress and the electoral votes based on that has skewed to the left. So this is absolutely about power for some. They won't admit it, though. We've seen them vote against this issue when it came to the SAVE Act, which said, you have to approve U.S. citizenship just to register to vote. They'll say, oh, it doesn't happen,

or it doesn't happen a lot, and yet they vote no for such anti-fraud measures. The left tried to pin this on the right as great replacement theory. It seems like that narrative has completely collapsed for the reasons that you just outlined. Something so simple as the U.S. census, right? I saw a tweet today, actually, that said, without any of the immigration enforcement that could happen in the next four years, that they project right now in 2030 just based on how the American population is moving throughout the country that California will lose five congressional seats, five. And now, and put deportations on top of that.

I mean, I'm from Southern California. I'm from Yorba Linda right next to San Ana. I've driven through those cash transient societies all growing up. I know exactly what they look like. I know exactly the type of people who live there. Some of them are great people. they do have a higher rate of crime than the other areas surrounding it. It's just blatantly the truth. That's what the data says. And so if you have a large-scale deportation effort, you could see California

lose five, ten congressional districts, right? Ten electoral college votes next time we're talking about an election, I guess it would be in 2032. That would be the first election where it really takes shape. But it's so interesting to see how fast that specific talking point has been defanged by just some of the most blatantly obvious abuses of this system. Have you been called a great replacement theory, disinformation, goul throughout this process? I mean, do you think that the attacks are still kind of sapping the energy out of this movement? Or do you think it's just all totally been washed away by the wind? tend to go to the racist xenophob arguments more. Every once in a while they'll throw out the great replacement theory, but they don't use that as much. Yeah, it's just, it's such a blatant abuse of

the system that the founder set up to say, we're going to not actually count American citizens in the U.S. census. As we look to day one, There's probably some orders of order of operations problems that need to be addressed. But what are the executive orders that Trump should sign on day one regarding immigration? One is fully securing the border, telling the border agents they are now free to do their job and enforce all the laws on the books. Declaring a national emergency to deal with the, right now we're at 10.5 million. inadmissible alien encounters by Customs and Border Protection, plus another more than 2 million known godaways.

And I say more than that because that number is at least a year old due to the fact that CBPs, a lot of their equipment isn't operating, eyes in the sky that can count godaways. Also the interior enforcement, directing ICE, moving resources around to resource ice sufficiently to enforce the laws and remove many of these people who don't belong here or broke the law coming here who endanger Americans, endanger migrants, finding the children that are missing. So during this Biden-Harris administration, over 525,000 unaccompanied children came to the U.S.

In part because of a bad law that needs to be repealed, and in part because Secretary Mayorka said multiple times publicly. If you come as an unaccompanied child, we will not turn you back. And so it is an enticement. The statute in place regarding unaccompanied children offers immigration benefits to unaccompanied children. So of course, what are we going to get and what have we gotten more unaccompanied children? And the numbers have been so vast that health and human services, which is responsible to provide shelter and find a sponsor for these children, has not been able to keep up. And Secretary Bacera of HHS has treated them like widgets on an assembly line, just trying to get them as quickly as possible out of HHS shelters and two

so-called sponsors who they haven't vetted and out the door because the incoming volume is so high. And inevitably, then these children end up in abusive, terrible situations, including sex trafficking and child labor violations. And HHS has lost track of hundreds of thousands of these kids. And we need to find them. Hundreds of thousands? So was it, the last number that I saw was 291,000 that they've lost contact with. Hello, 291,000 children missing in the United States. I mean, how is this not the left's rallying call right now? I mean, I know that this is happening under a Biden administration, but it feels like, like the first thing that you think about, 291,000 missing children, the left going after Donald Trump for family separation, and not a peep

from the corporate media at all. You talked a little bit about how that happens in the first place, but it's not DHS, it's HHS involved. So how do we stop losing children in the United States? I mean, this seems like the great humanitarian cause of our time. Well, you're right. The left only calls it out on one side. You know, when their opponent supposedly is separating families, which was not the case. The left is all in for this form of child separation by welcoming more unaccompanied children and enticing them with immigration benefits. How does this happen? Because the numbers are so high. So HHS contracts with organizations, NGOs, that attempts to make two calls or contacts with a sponsor that's supposed to be taking care of these children. And if they

don't make contact with that sponsor, then that child is considered missing. And so one of the first jobs that the new administration is going to have to do is reach out, collect the data that we have on the sponsors, such as it is, and find many of these children. And Tom Homan's talked about this, because so many of these kids are put into child labor violation conditions, they're going to find them, you know, at work sites, at plants, whether it's, you know, poultry plants or meatpacking plants in dangerous situations because these unvetted sponsors have done this. We really need to repeal this law that entices unaccompanied children with immigration benefits. This is going to be shocking for me, but I actually need to

apologize to the corporate media for saying that they don't say a peep about it. They do. The New York Times had an amazing expose on the type of, it's not just sex trafficking, right? You lose 291,000 kids into the interior of the United States, and you think, oh my gosh, that's terrible. And then, you know, your first retort is, yeah, and a lot, like, they are abused by human traffickers. Now, that is a very small percentage of them, but it should be reason enough to shut the entire system down. It's not just those who are victimized by gangs or by sex traffickers, though, a large percentage of them. I would even venture to say a plurality based on the type of reporting that the New York Times has done, the exposés, that the investigations at the, the house has done into this issue. They're abused by poor labor conditions. They're abused by

corporations. It was a phenomenal piece of reporting from the New York Times. And yet in that piece of reporting, they always blame deservedly so. They blame the corporations and they blame the business owners who hire these young kids. They deserve a lot of the blame. But what the report doesn't say is that all of this is incentivized industrially by the United States government's policy right now. Do you think that's why, like, people are experiencing this every day, not only sex trafficking or the gang violence, but just seeing, you know, everyday asylum seekers or, you know, parolees with the wave of Juan from Kamala Harris or illegal migrants just being abused day to day? Like, do you think that's the reason for this massive Overton window shift

where now a majority of the population supports mass deportations. Shocking to me. It is. It's due to the numbers. The left went way too far on this. The historic number after historic number, whether it's the CBP encounters,

whether it's the known godaways, whether it's the unaccompanied children, whether it's the American deaths due to fentanyl and other opioid forms, whether it is the number of migrant deaths in our, you know, Western Hemisphere. on and on and on. And Americans feel this and see this every day. Think about Springfield, Ohio, or Aurora, Colorado, south side of Chicago, New York City, the hotels that are being

used as shelters for these populations, the overcrowded schools, overcrowded emergency rooms, lack of housing, and the taxes that are going up to pay for all this. We get data points here and there in terms of costs, Massachusetts, a billion dollars for housing, New York City, $5 billion in just two years, and on and on across all of the country. And so it didn't matter during the primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. This was the number one issue when voters were asked because the loss of sovereignty, because the loss of security, whether that's national security or personal security because the Americans who were killed, Lake and Riley, Jocelyn, and on and on, needless, preventable crimes. And Americans want to feel safe in their communities, and they've had it.

Yeah, the humanitarian narrative that we talked about earlier, the hippie narrative has been flipped on its head to say, actually the real humanitarian crisis is saying, you know, come into my house to 10 million people and not doing anything to support them. I mean, who throws a party and does nothing for their guests. That's a very polite way of saying it. But before I so rudely interrupted you, you were talking about how on day one, the president has the executive authority to secure the southern border if he wants to. This was a live debate in Congress as we considered the quote-unquote bipartisan border bill. And we talked about the SAVE Act. And we talked about all the things, all the immigration pieces of legislation that didn't get done over the past

session in Congress, Democrats would say time and time again that the reason that the bipartisan border bill needs to get passed is because as it stands, Joe Biden does not have the authority on his own to secure the southern border. You say he does. Why is that? He did all this by himself with a pen, executive orders and regulations. We haven't had a major immigration bill since 1996. So it wasn't legislation that created this mess. He did it himself using executive authority. And in terms of the legislation,

what gets lost among the repeated claims for this supposed bipartisan Senate bill is HR2 that secure the border act on the House side. That was a fantastic bill. it passed the House. It's been sitting on the Senate desk, Senator Schumer's desk, since May of 2023. But they refused to take that up because it would actually secure the border and close some statutory loopholes that need to be closed. The Senate at a time when they needed more money, and this goes to the NGOs, the non-governmental organizations that the Biden-Harris administration

has so heavily relied on to carry out this mass migration to the U.S. and throughout the U.S. Tens of billions of dollars to health and human services, to the State Department, to DHS, to DOJ, to carry all this out. And it turns and going to the sanctuary cities. So when you think about New York City Mayor Adams saying, we need the federal government's help because they were being overwhelmed with numbers. He wasn't calling to, for a policy change. He didn't end his city's sanctuary policies.

He was asking for more money. Same thing in Chicago. Same thing in Denver. I mean, it became a grift. And these NGOs were writing letters to DHS saying, please, we need more money. Because they were burning through hundreds of millions of dollars to fly, bus, shelter, feed, give welfare to these millions of aliens who had they brought in.

And the calls were growing louder for more money. And if you recall when they were asking for money for Ukraine and for Israel, they included in that more border security funding. All it was going to do was pay off these sanctions. politicians and continue to pay the NGOs to keep this machine going. So the Senate, Senator Schumer and some others, doubled down and said, well, while we're at it, why not try to get codified the very tools Joe Biden has been using in policy to keep this going? Yeah, so sorry to interrupt you again, but there's so much of what

a friend of ours, Mark Kerkorian, over the Center for Immigration Studies, told me this once, and I thought it was a great way to say it. The way that Democrats view the immigration problem is an optics problem. As long as you build a machine to process the number of migrants you are currently encountering, you're fine. Conservatives, meanwhile, think that it is a national security problem, it is a societal welfare problem, all the different problems that we've already been talking about this podcast on this podcast. That's what the Senate Bipartisan Border Bill was meant to do, right, was to get rid of the optics problem that the Biden administration was experiencing by building a machine that could process the amount of migrants that Joe Biden

wanted to bring into the country. Is that the right reading of the Senate Bipartisan Border bill? What was in the bill that made it so terrible? It caught a full. It caught a high levels of daily, weekly illegal alien encounters, 4,000, 5,000, even up to over 8,000 a day, illegal alien encounters. And recall, President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Jay Johnson, said, 1,000 a day was a bad day. That was testing the system. And that bill also would handcuff a future president who would want to enforce.

who would want to enforce the law in terms of catch and release and require or actually prohibit several groups or populations of aliens from immigration detention, saying you have to release them into American communities. It also took the mass parole that this administration has been abusing and violating the law, expand it, and then codify it. It would also give taxpayer-funded attorneys, immigration attorneys, to deportable aliens in civil immigration hearings. Now, if you think about that for a moment, we as U.S. citizens have a right to a public defender in a criminal case, but we don't have a right to a taxpayer-funded attorney in civil proceedings. If you think about divorce or contract cases, we don't have a right to have a taxpayer-funded attorney. And yet what this bill would do and what the left has tried for decades is to get taxpayers to pay for deportation attorneys for deportable aliens.

So essentially, not only is the border going to remain wide open, you're codifying all of that taxpayer money that had gone out the door over the past four years if you pass this bill. That's right. You just permanently put the drag on the American taxpayer money. to fund for great replacement theory. Huh. Yeah, see, this is why I would get so frustrated throughout the 2024 campaign cycle when ever Kamala Harris would bring up the bipartisan border bill,

and I'm using air quotes if you're not watching. Every single time I say bipartisan border bill, it wasn't bipartisan. This was rejected. This scheme was rejected by the Republican conference, and nevertheless, Mitch McConnell, sacrificed James Lankford on the altar of bipartisanship by sending him back in there time and time and time again to negotiate a deal, which the Republican Conference would have never in their right minds gone for. And so I just couldn't help get so mad at Mitch McConnell and the establishment wing of the Republican Party for continuing to push this bill or at least push these negotiations when we knew that nothing good at all was going to come of it.

Yeah, and these senators who were negotiating were negotiating with Secretary Mayarchus, who not only was overseeing much of these operations, but also was under impeachment at the time. And so the- By the Republican-controlled House, of course, right? Correct. Another screw you to the Republican Party. Yes, which their peers in the legislature. then when they, um, that impeachment went to the Senate, uh, Senator Schumer for the first time, ignored it, tabled it. Um, but that bill, the Senate bill quickly and rightly failed before it even got to the Senate floor. And when they tried to bring it up again, the second time, even Senator Lankford voted no. We've talked about how the executive has the power right now.

to close the southern border if he wants to. Nevertheless, we're looking at a trifecta for conservatives in government. Conservative is in the White House. They're going to be in the Senate. Control in the Senate. They're going to be control in the House come January. HR2 is something that you previously mentioned. Something that a lot of my friends on Capitol Hill love talking about

because they're really enthusiastic about this reform. Clearly, in some way, shape, reform, legislation is needed, not that the president needs it for enforcement and to shut the border, but Republicans see a border bill necessary to codify the reforms that Trump had initially put in place and some other reforms to the immigration system. What is HR2, what's in it, and why is it such a badly needed piece of legislation? There are three loopholes right now in the current immigration. law that cartels, smugglers, many parties exploit. One of them is the unaccompanied children that we

talked about. Right now, the law reads that if you are an unaccompanied child from Mexico or Canada, you're going to be sent back to that home country. But if you are from anywhere else in the world, you get to come into the U.S. and stay here and be showered with multiple immigration benefits because you came in as an unaccompanied child. What HR2 would do is close that loophole and treat anyone as someone similar to Mexico or Canada. You are going to be sent home to your family unless you have a persecution claim or what have you. But the second loophole is what's called Flores. This has to do with immigration detention. It started as a class action in the 1980s, and it's still going, if you can believe it, about detention.

detention standards. And a single liberal judge from California, Dolly G., that's her name, took it upon herself to decide and declare that not only could unaccompanied children not be detained longer than 20 days, but accompanied children. So therefore, family members, family units could not be detained in immigration for more than 20 days. She also came up the 20 days herself. The 20 days wasn't written into the law. So on two different occasions, she took it upon herself to greatly limit who can be detained. And so HR2 would undo that. It would allow enough time to have a immigration case heard because it's not going to be done in less than 20 days. And that way, the family unit or the alien could have their

case decided and then go on with their lives. Either they are granted relief here in the U.S. or they are sent home. And then the third one has to do with credible fear. And this goes to what the left has really done in ruining asylum, which I view as the second most important immigration benefit we give after U.S. citizenship. It is easy to defraud. And so right now in the law, someone can come try to sneak in the border between the ports, claim fear by just saying a few words, which is a very low standard to meet and then go apply for asylum, maybe if they actually apply, but basically disappear into the country. And if they do then apply for asylum, that's a higher standard to meet.

And it is often denied. And so bringing those two standards together so that we are not so easily. defrauding our asylum system. So it's, uh, the Democrats used lack of executive power to hide the fact that they wanted to codify the open border, uh, with this bipartisan border bill. Now, Republicans are trying to codify a system where the same abuses from the Biden administration are not possible. Is there any, God knows that the left will try to find a workaround to HR2 if it is implemented. If Joe Biden were to run again in 2028

and beat whoever Republicans nominate, would Joe Biden be able to do the same thing under HR2 or there are other loopholes that Joe Biden would be able to exploit or would this actually solve the problem for good? If an administration's following the law, it would go a long way. But this administration has shown

that it is not one to follow the law. So this is a similar situation where they could use executive prerogative, like the Obama administration, to try to prevent themselves from enforcing HR2? Yeah, I mean, they would continue to release aliens into American communities. They would probably continue to provide parole and continue other temporary programs. they've really blurred the line between legal and illegal immigration with a lot of these temporary categories and dub them lawfully present, even though, you know, a read of the statute, it's pretty evident that they are really abusing it. And then the other thing they do is then give everyone work authorization documents for all

these temporary categories. And so when states or other downstream parties say, you know, are you here lawfully, well, this person has a work authorization document. So presumably, yes, you know, not knowing that the immigration benefit beneath that work authorization document should not have been issued. Previously, when I asked you about the Overton window shifting to a majority of the American population supporting mass deportations, we talked a little bit of. about the humanitarian causes for that shift. Let's talk about the right in particular. You've worked for 30 years in immigration. I mean, Trump has completely shifted the overtone window of the right of the Republican Party of conservatives on this issue. Fifty-six percent of the general population believe mass deportations are necessary. Way more Republicans, right, if there's

made, it's like a 90 to 10 issue where they think mass deportations are really, really needed. First, how bizarre has that shift been on the right for you to see in the Trump era? Like, was this something that you anticipated was coming down the pike just because the numbers were just, would be just too difficult to maintain? Or was this something that has genuinely surprised you, like this shift towards mass deportation? Well, we would often call for interior enforcement and immigration integrity well before Joe Biden became president. And it would, you know, receive lip service among some Republicans.

They would focus more on border. They were more eager to give resources and more agents to border patrol, not so, you know, willing to give ICE more resources for interior enforcement. And the reason we've seen now this support for mass deportation is because of the numbers. You know, if you're talking 10 million plus another 2 million and the deaths that have resulted from it and Americans seeing this in every community every day, that is what's driven support for mass deportations. So we can thank Joe Biden almost more than Donald Trump.

on this issue, it seems, right? Yeah, unfortunately, yes. In a weird way. This tragically weird way. Yes. The left always overreaches, and this is just yet another example. J.D. Vance, our now vice president-elect,

has fielded many questions about the plan to go forward with mass deportations. And his first thing is, hey, first, stop the bleeding. Second, we go after the folks who very clearly should not be here, the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists, and they're getting in. We just found that out, right? Over 10,000 murderers and rapists are loose in this country, and we have no way to track them down and get them out.

And then you move on to different classes of migrants throughout this deportation process. Ten millions, a lot of people, and that's on the low estimate side, right? step by step order of operations how do you get how do you get how do you get how do you deport 12 million people uh well there's all already over a million that have who have final orders of removal they went through their due process in immigration court an immigration judge ordered their removal and they absconded and they're still here so executing those orders as well also need to get creative self-deportation is a real thing um and so So basically I say that illegal aliens want five things when they come here. They want to enter. They

want to remain. They want to work here. They want to send money home and they want to bring or have family here. And so if you prevent those five things, then they are either not going to come or go elsewhere. And so in terms of entry, we talked about, you know, remain in Mexico and the wall and border agents, et cetera, stopping the ability to remain here. That includes immigration detention. But it also means not providing downstream benefits, whether that's driver's licenses or business licenses, etc., etc., not allowing people to work. You know, people are very familiar with that. We have you verify using that more. Remittances has always been the tough nut to crack, and remittances makes a very large portion of GDP for several countries. It could be their number one source of GDP or

Number two, I mean, it is up there. And the U.S. has not taxed it. It has not prevented it. The state of Oklahoma is the only one currently who does tax remittances. But that is something that needs a hard look at. And then preventing people from bringing family here or having family here. The Trump administration during the first term did advocate for ending chain migration. for shrinking family-based immigration down to the nuclear family, so spouse and minor children,

and then focusing more on employment-based immigration, but also ending birthright citizenship, which is an incorrect interpretation of the Constitution that says this interpretation has been that if you're born here, just mere fact of the soil, regardless of the status of your parents, that you are a U.S. citizen. That takes care of some of the self-deportation problems. It does happen. Interactions at the border need to go down, processing, need to send people back.

But now we're talking about people who are kind of established in these communities, in these cash transient communities that I previously mentioned, right? They know the person that they go to for medical care if they take medical care, or they're not draining the public fist by showing up to the emergency room. They know the, you know, the folks that they can go to to get specific goods that otherwise they wouldn't have access to.

They know how to use the government welfare system to their advantage. These aren't dumb people, right? These are everyday people who are pretty smart and just trying to make sure that they make it in this country. And to a certain degree, you know, you have to say, like, I respect that, but you're also in violation of our country's laws and you need to go home. That internal enforcement, I mean, I do not. I'm not envious of Christy Knoem. It's going to take a lot of internal enforcement. What does that enforcement look like?

Because I think right now in the corporate media's head, it's like knocking on doors, you know, the Gestapo's back. Like, you know, they're getting rid of people. They're pulling them out of their homes by their hair. Like, I mean, it just, it seems like they're already trying to cook up the stories that they want to write the most. And that is abuses, potentially. abuses by ICE and CBP when they go forward with this deportation project. So how does that internal

enforcement work? How should how should you do it in a publicly mindful way? Well, how it works is you are issued, if you are deportable because you snuck across the border, you ever stayed a visa, you committed a crime, et cetera. You became deportable in the statute. You're issued what's called a notice to appear. And that begins removal proceedings. And it says, you're supposed to, appear before this immigration judge on the state at this court. And then you go into court and you either acknowledge, yes, I'm deportable because as charged. And then most of the proceedings focus on relief from deportation. So that is, are you eligible for a benefit? And mostly they apply for asylum. And so then you go through the merits of their asylum claim and the judge issues an order.

You can then appeal that to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also in the Justice Department. And unfortunately, you know, aliens will game the court system and they'll file motions and they'll file appeals. They'll take it to federal court all to buy more time here to stay here longer like I talked about before. But it means that when a judge issues a final order of removal, then ICE needs to execute it. And so then they will issue, it's called a bag and baggage letter, at least used to back in my day, saying, okay, you need to report to ICE on this date and we're going to remove you. But I think other measures should be used as well. Communications with aliens who are here, whether that's CBP saying,

we see that your final admit date on your visa is coming up. if you haven't already made travel plans to depart the U.S. now's the time to do so, requiring aliens to prove that they have departed the country. Congress, after decades ago, required a biometric entry exit system. And this was a key finding by the 9-11 Commission that that really needs to be done and hurry up about it. And Congress has passed multiple laws saying, yes, yes, yes, do this biometric entry exit. still haven't really done the exit. It isn't hard with technology. And the mere fact of the government communicating with these aliens, we know you're here, you're supposed to be leaving

soon, or you should have already left, show us that you're departing and show proof of departure. The more that can happen and saying this will prevent you from being barred from reentry for a number of years, then we're going to drive that lawful behavior and get to. people away from coming illegally and actually obeying the law. With respect to people who have been here years illegally, I think also we need to get creative and say, okay, if you self-depart, depart, if we don't have to spend government resources to come find you and remove you, then you can get back in line in a year or two years. We're not going to make you wait the 10 years. I don't know. Congress has to think about this. But the point is,

we want to change behavior. Everyone says, oh, we want lawful immigration and people need to obey the law. That means applying consequences and getting people to change their behavior. And so there's a number of ways to do that. I think sometimes the right is too legalistically minded when it comes to the immigration issue. And I think it's been nice to see through this weird and wonderful coalition that the right has built over the course of this 2024 election cycle that you're starting to not just look at immigration as a legal issue. You're looking at as a quality of life issue. What does success look like in 2028 if the president's immigration agenda is enacted? If your friend Tom Homan does his job, if Christy Noem does her job, what does success look like?

Does it just simply look like numbers go down? Or is there something more substantial that the American people should be able to look forward to. It is certainly interior enforcement, so many of those who came during the Biden administration illegally are removed. But it is also the backlogs have greatly reduced. And we have backlogs in two places. The immigration court system has over 3 million cases pending when Biden started. It was at 1.2 million.

and also over at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That's at about 9.2 million cases. And for those who actually do try to come legally and wait patiently, their cases are buried among many fraudulent applications or work authorization applications at USCIS based on this erroneous parole or other temporary categories Secretary Mayork has handed out. And so getting those backlogs down would be give tremendous service to those who are obeying the law. And then frankly, after that, I think we need to throw out the

whole immigration statute and just start over. It is too complicated. It's too slow. It's too expensive. And it just frustrates those who are trying to obey the law. I think it needs to be made much simpler so that aliens can do this lawfully, not have to go hire immigration attorneys and spend a lot of money doing this, but be based in what benefits America in terms of sovereignty, in terms of a lawful, manageable system that communities and populations we can assimilate into the American fabric in terms of a common language and loyalty and good understanding. of civics and learning English, we've gotten away from that, and it shows. Laura Reese, thank you for joining me on The Signal Sit Down.

I feel like we're probably going to have you back on sooner rather than later, because this is going to be, I think, the most important issue to watch in the first two years of President Donald Trump's administration. Thank you for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you so much for tuning into the Signal Sit Down. Before you go, be sure to hit like and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you may be joining us. And please remember to give us a five-star review.

We not only love your feedback, but it really does help the show. Remember, it's your government, and together we'll expose how it really works. See you next time.