The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: Alligator Alcatraz

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Immigration activist Thomas Kennedy joins Billy Corben in studio to talk about a new detention center that is being built in The Everglades. Plus, Alejandro de la Fuente, professor of History and Afri...can American Studies at Harvard, joins the program to talk about the effect of Donald Trump's attempt to block foreign students from entering colleges and universities in America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:32 Proximo. Cuervo.com. Please drink responsibly. Cuervo. This episode is brought to you by Dzone. For the first time ever, the 32 best soccer clubs from across the world are coming together to decide who the undisputed champions of the world are in the FIFA Club World Cup. The world's best players, Messi, Holland, Kane and more are all taking part. And you can watch every match for free on Dazone starting on June 14th and running until July 13th. Sign up now at Dazone.com slash FIFA. That's D-A-Z-N dot com slash fifa.
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Starting point is 00:02:09 general says that construction has begun on a new controversial migrant detention facility in Everglades. He calls it alligator Alcatraz. People get out. There's not much waiting for him other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Monday night, deep in the Everglades, about an hour and a half drive from Miami, two patrol cars guard the Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport. The home of the failed Everglades Jetport project
Starting point is 00:02:34 from the 70s. Right now the area is used as a pilot training facility. 39 square miles, including an existing big plane runway along US 41 on the Miami-Dade Collier line. But Miami-Dade County owns the land and the mayor says that she still needs answers. There are concerns about the environmental impacts and the property's appraisal. The state offering 20 million dollars but the county says the most recent numbers put the total value of the site at at least 190190 million. This presents a great opportunity for the state of Florida
Starting point is 00:03:06 to work with Miami-Dade and Collier counties. Alligator Alcatraz, we're ready to go. With a planned opening day sometime around the first week of July. Still, many are slamming the idea, citing environmental concerns. Alligator Alcatraz. Last week it was merely a rumor, this week the Governor Ron DeSantis has seized the property, 39 square miles of it, owned by Dade County, and has just started building this makeshift, just, I don't
Starting point is 00:03:45 know, out of like toothpicks and popsicle sticks or whatever. They just, they're building a prison with at least 5,000 beds. Joining us later in this episode is hard professor Alejandro de la Fuente, who wrote an op-ed last week saying, basically saying saying am I back in Cuba? It all seems thematically related Tomas. We are joined by Tomas Kennedy who this week the Miami New Times and their best of Miami Issue declared Miami's best community organizer Magatav
Starting point is 00:04:22 There you go. We are gonna we are crowning him. Just one more. We are crowning him. Just one more king. We are crowning him. That's it. Just one more king. No more king. Uno mas. One more king. Two more kings. Because you, my friend, also got best of.
Starting point is 00:04:34 I did. I got a best of Miami. I'm scrolling down in the New Times and I saw Tomas Kennedy's name, Best of Miami, and I saw Best Play, Lincoln Road Hustle from Miami New Drama that we did late last year, earlier this year, so Best of Miami, and we are in very good company,
Starting point is 00:04:49 because as I continued scrolling down, and the Best of Miami New Times, I saw Best Local Boy Gone Bad, Enrique Tario, Miami's own, Clayton Bigsby, your boy. Well, my friend said, only in America would an Afro-Cuban be able to lead a roving gang of white supremacists. Hi. Because, I mean...
Starting point is 00:05:15 Hashtag America. Because Miami. Because America, speaking of which, speaking of Because America, speaking of what's left of the Fifth and now Eighth Amendments. So I want to start here on alligator Alcatraz. So setting aside for a moment that they offered 20 million,
Starting point is 00:05:31 the land is worth 190 million, and then didn't even bother to negotiate our completely useless mayor, county mayor, Danielle Levinkova, who could not be like she is the worst mayor for this moment in history for Miami just Absolutely the worst I've been calling this shit out for like five years And what's funny is now all of a sudden all the people that have been fighting me on it for years feel like they're coming around to that fact The county here is getting screwed over
Starting point is 00:06:02 In so many different ways one is the environmental concern about this facility. This concentration camp in the middle of the desert, right? The Everglades, yeah. It's in the middle of a national park. The Friends of the Everglades, the non-profit conservationist group, was founded by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and other folks in opposition of this site being developed into a very, very large commercial airport, right? This was going to be the world's largest airport and yeah they created this non-profit, the legendary
Starting point is 00:06:32 environmentalist Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, basically to stop this from and they did, they succeeded in the early 70s. Well you know there is some construction there, basically an airstrip, but yeah the project was mostly abandoned and now it serves as a training flight runway by Big Cypress. The environmentalists were successful with that and there's always sort of been this question about what to do with that site, right? There's been efforts to turn it into a military base, hurricane relief, preparedness, management, storage place. There's been talk about, you know, ceding it fully to the national park protection. So, or possibly even selling it to the Mikasuki whose reservation is right, I mean, adjacent to
Starting point is 00:07:17 it. Correct. But that question has been called because the governor is using an emergency proclamation from 2023 related to immigration because of, you know, the supposed Biden border crisis, whatever, using that proclamation from 2023. That he's actually renewed arbitrarily like a dozen times, I think, between. Right. Like a true fascist does, because that's what they do. Declare as a fake emergency. They govern through fake emergency proclamations giving them you know
Starting point is 00:07:47 supreme authority and they continue to renew them over and over again I mean that that's what that's what these authoritarians do so he used this emergency proclamation to take over the land average early the property really is priceless but it is appraised for $195 million. They offered a possible $20 million of FEMA money, by the way, during hurricane season. They want to use FEMA emergency money. It's hurricane season right now. By the way, they say it's going to cost upwards of what, $425 million a year just to operate this shithole.
Starting point is 00:08:20 And they've already dedicated a very small amount of that to year one but it's from FEMA, it's from hurricane relief money during hurricane season. Hurricane relief money and let's not forget that we just had a legislative session that was extended well over a month from when it was supposed to end because lawmakers couldn't get it together on the budget because we are facing a $2.8 billion budget with a B as soon as next year. And now they're gonna spend $425 million a year on this Gator Gulag.
Starting point is 00:08:53 No, I'm gonna spend half a billion on Gator Gulag on Little Antanamo. Now you did a beautiful job of doing the backstory on this and the exposition and avoiding my question. No, no, no, I'm getting to it. Oh, I'm getting to it. Which was Daniela Levine Cava, I'm getting to it. Oh, I'm getting to it. Which was Daniella Levine Cava I'm getting to it the mayor of Miami Dade County who is the CEO of a 13 billion dollar a year corporation with 40,000 employees and seems
Starting point is 00:09:17 Completely useless right now. She was at the ribbon cutting of a new Terminal and it like the extension of a terminal at Miami International Airport. Make Miami Airport great again. Dude, which is not what we need at the airport. We don't need more terminals. We need working escalators and a working SkyTrain and moving walkways and working toilets. But they're like, oh no, we're gonna have six new,
Starting point is 00:09:41 like no, stop, don't grow it, just fix what's there. Gotta master the basics. Yeah, I have a question. Gotta walk before you can run. I have a question, are they just gonna have broken bathrooms again? We're building new broken bathrooms. We're gonna build new escalators that don't work.
Starting point is 00:09:57 This is what she's doing while there's, and I wish we could take callers on this show again, because that was fun, Roy really misses that. I know you miss that part. No, I don't, sorry, no. And so show again because that was fun Roy really misses that I know and so So the lie detective test determined that was a lie so Because because you called it a concentration camp, and I don't really know I mean academically That's what it I don't know how else to explain it. I mean, I'm saying it's an extermination camp But it's a no no best case scenario. It's the Japanese in World War two worst case scenario It's the Jews in World War two and I would love the phone lines to light up on that because let's talk about this for a second
Starting point is 00:10:36 The more we're now I'm ducking the the question. Yeah about me, but here's the thing. Oh, here's the thing summer in the Everglades I made a documentary called square group or the godfathers of ganja one of the stories was about the poth. Summer in the Everglades. I made a documentary called Square Grouper, The Godfathers of Ganja. One of the stories was about the pothollers out in Everglades City. Where we shot that, I think, was the summer of 2010. I was walking around watching, looking at all these redneck fishermen,
Starting point is 00:10:56 and it's 120 degrees outside, and they've got like turtlenecks, long sleeves. I mean, like they're all bundled up, and I'm like, dude, it's too hot for that. The skaters. And then I realized. I woke up one morning, Roy. The back of my neck looked like the elephant man. I was deformed because I got eaten. Some of these skaters are like the size of my head.
Starting point is 00:11:15 I've never seen, it's like Jurassic Park out there. Forget the gators and the pythons. There is skaters, there is disease, there is heat. People are going to die. People are already dead. The people who work they are going to die or three people died in chrome I mean a person died in a BTC which is the detention center in pompano Beach managed by by Geo is a for-profit one but look I mean we have president right I mean Joe Arpaio infamous sheriff from Arizona American indicted had a pardoned yeah also had a tent city for I think 24 years in
Starting point is 00:11:51 Arizona where they basically imprisoned undocumented people it faced numerous lawsuits from former people in detention that were abused mistreated there were multiple like UN and Amnesty International reports detailing the overcrowdedness, the dangerous conditions, the overheating of individuals, the lack of hygienic product, medicine, illness, etc. So we've seen that and that's in Arizona, right, with awful desert heat. This isn't the Everglades, it's in the season hurricane season and this place does not have adequate infrastructure adequate running water Uthmayr the Attorney General was quoted saying in the hair of Meyer he's from Spain he was quoted saying that they don't need to build brick and
Starting point is 00:12:40 mortar they'll just do tents oh it's it's yes I'm let me get let me get let me answer the Daniela question. Okay. Well, I, I, okay. So the reason I want to paint a picture of how, if I may curse up this facility is, how, how much, sorry. Roy! We're going to censor it with that. We're just going to, we're going to take, we're going to,
Starting point is 00:13:01 wherever you say the F word is, you're just going to go, let me just tell you how up this is. People get it. But the county is being screwed over in so many ways, right? They have, I think, standing in multiple ways to sue. And really, the only thing that can stop this is a lawsuit by the county. Sure. Well, I think they're going to ignore it. But whatever. Right. The state is going to ignore.
Starting point is 00:13:22 Right. But I mean, we need it. And the county and commissioners are not stepping up. In fact, they're not doing anything. It's our land. It's our property. Daniella was quoted in the Herald saying, I understand they need for a detention center. And I'm not opposed to that.
Starting point is 00:13:39 Literally, like she said that. But I just have some environmental concerns. That's, I'm sorry, not good enough. It's not strong enough. Like this is severe, it's serious. She's useless. Her political career is over. She's not running for governor.
Starting point is 00:13:54 She'll probably try to run for Congress, but I don't think that's a real thing. If you're gonna like die on a hill or take a stand, do it for the Everglades. She accurately pointed out that the federal and state government has spent billions of dollars trying to preserve the Everglades and now we're going to shit all over it. Correct. And you also have the example of the crap storm.
Starting point is 00:14:19 I will censor myself. Roy! Can we say crap? Roystorm. It's theraystorm. Roy! That, can we say crap? Roystorm, it's the Roystorm. The Roystorm that DeSantis caught when he was trying to develop those stupid pickleball courts in the state parks. Oh, and yet he wanted to like slash and burn state parks
Starting point is 00:14:34 to build golf courses and sure. People generally don't like building crap in our state and national parks. That's not supposed to be there. Paddle, paddle. Paddle, like Kale, you eat kale salad? Sure. Sure.
Starting point is 00:14:49 Right. I mentioned the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment for our constitutional scholars at home is cruel and unusual punishment. It is without a doubt, even the people who are gonna be working at this facility, to me, that's a violation of their Eighth Amendment rights. There should be no state or federal workers
Starting point is 00:15:07 who work in that kind of environment in the Everglades in summer during hurricane season. These- And for what? You know what I mean? Well, to violate their Fifth Amendment rights of due process, because we already know, and I'm tired of hearing about this,
Starting point is 00:15:20 that, well, if you ain't in illegal, if you ain't in illegal, I don't know, that's not how Miamians sound when they're making that argument, but if you ain't in illegal if you ain't in illegal I don't know that's not how Miami and sound when they're making that argument but if you're not an illegal as you have nothing to worry about that is horse shit or as we call it raw shit oh wait did I censor the run that is horse raw so hey man if you look Hispanic if you are brown or black if you have a last name that ends in Z
Starting point is 00:15:46 and I don't mean Schwartz, you are gonna get detained. You might even get arrested while they figure out if you got a blue passport or you have a smart ID that they think is fake. And you've got guys out there who are now not really federal officers, but are ostensibly proud boys or bounty hunters that are just trying to make a quota,
Starting point is 00:16:03 just trying to get 31 bodies a day or a 3,000 bodies a day and they don't give a f*** if they are detaining they don't give a f*** if they are arresting or detaining American citizens when I say American citizens I mean people born in this country who might be Hispanic they're gonna drag them out to a f***ing concentration camp in the f***ing Everglades. Three examples. Sorry, concentration camp humor. We literally had to intervene to help secure the release of a US born citizen that just couldn't speak English and looked Hispanic who was detained by Florida Highway Patrol and put in an ice holding jail.
Starting point is 00:16:44 Florida Highway Patrol? What was he doing? in Yale County jail. Florida Highway Patrol? What was he doing? Was it a speeding? He was pulled over for what? He wasn't even driving. He was, you know that lawsuit that we have against Uthmeyer for this- Uthmeyer.
Starting point is 00:16:53 Uthmeyer for this state law that makes it entry into the state as undocumented person illegal? That law is blocked because of our lawsuit. They charged them under that law that they weren't supposed to be charging people under, a US citizen, and then put him on an ice hold for 28 hours and we had to help secure his release. And it was because they racially profiled him.
Starting point is 00:17:11 And this is the kind of guy who could be in, they'll put him right in the f***ing Everglades. I also want to make the point, going back to the mayor, CVP, Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard bordered a boat that she was on with Telemundo VIPs, like leadership of Telemundo Network and FIFA executives. Like VIPs. They're a bunch of illegals though, aren't they? They boarded the boat. I heard about it.
Starting point is 00:17:35 I was the first one to report it. They were trying to deny it. The mayor was silent on it for like over 24 hours until she finally wrote an op-ed on it. I feel like Telemundo still hasn't talked about it. They have footage of it and they still haven't released it. Of course, because everybody wants to, you know, keep things quiet because of FIFA. They don't want to scare FIFA off.
Starting point is 00:17:53 My point is, if they will do that to a vote of some of the most powerful people in this county and really, I mean, FIFA VIPs are very powerful people. Imagine what they'll do to you. But wait a second. But she's the mayor of FIFA, isn't she now? That's what Daniela is. It feels like it, honestly. She's like a less effeminate Frances Suarez. We can say that now!
Starting point is 00:18:16 So yeah, I mean, she's a ribbon cutter, but like this is a serious county with serious problems, and she is not a serious person, Daniela Levine Cava. And I want to talk about that lawsuit that you just mentioned. I also wanna talk about just blocks away from here is the immigration court where they are dismissing cases and they are then taking people into custody because they no longer have cases.
Starting point is 00:18:36 But we'll have to talk about that another time because I wanna talk about Uthmayer. And the reason is this kind of performative cruelty is this kind of performative cruelty this kind of performative cruelty it's just like what the president does it is a distraction from the crimes that they are committing to enrich themselves that's the thing about this whole era is that for all of the Christian nationalism, for all of the... Nazis are his base. For all of the pain and the suffering and the shredding of the Constitution,
Starting point is 00:19:12 it's all just a heist movie. That's what this is, because let's talk about Uthmayer for a second. This guy is under siege. He is like scandal-plagued right now. The criminal investigation is now underway into the Hope Florida Foundation. The program created by First Lady Casey DeSantis has been connected to a $10 million donation that was supposed to go to taxpayers.
Starting point is 00:19:33 We now know state prosecutors in Tallahassee are looking into whether $10 million in public money was secretly transferred to the foundation that funds the private Hope Florida charity started by Casey DeSantis. The shell game of public money diverted to the DeSantis political endeavors. Then chief of staff and now Florida Attorney General James Uffmeyer shepherded the whole process with the money eventually landing in his political action committee. We have information that tends to show that our attorney general committed money laundering and wire fraud. A federal judge finds Florida Attorney General James Uthmeyer in civil contempt. The judge accuses the attorney general of defying an order to
Starting point is 00:20:14 pause enforcement of a new state immigration law. The judge says the attorney general violated a directive to notify police agencies to halt enforcement. So, Uthmire is under criminal investigation in Leon County up in Tallahassee for alleged money laundering and wire fraud. An accusation, incidentally, from fellow Republicans, not from Democrats. And of course, he, like you said, mentioned like, oh, maybe federal courts will intervene with alligator Alcatraz. But the truth of the matter is this guy has already been held in civil contempt of court by a federal judge in the case you-
Starting point is 00:20:50 It's being held. Right, so like, this is just lawlessness at this point. It's a heist movie, but it's also about political ambition, right, because this is a guy that's gonna face a contested Republican primary, possibly from Matt Gaetz. And you know obviously the governor wants to run for president again. Sure. He wants to put his wife in in the governor's mansion in Tallahassee that's looking like dim prospects
Starting point is 00:21:14 because of this corruption and grift but you know it's just this constant need to compete in the attention economy right to remain irrelevant to generate division polarization controversy red meat to the base that's what causes you know attention economy, right, to remain relevant, to generate division, polarization, controversy, red meat to the base. That's what causes, you know, Uthmeyer to go on Benny Johnson's show and talk like a moron about snakes and alligators and alligator alcatraz. Performative cruelty. With like the shitty rock music that we heard in the beginning.
Starting point is 00:21:40 I mean, it's just so pathetic and it it's just, we have clout chasing influencers as politicians in this country for the most part. I mean, it's sad. It's people who don't wanna do the job because the job's hard. Just people who wanna title and wanna be able to go on shows. On Benny Johnson's podcast.
Starting point is 00:21:53 Yeah, and I think we need to mention that Uthmeyer is the unelected Attorney General of the state of Florida. Because when Ashley Moody became a Senator after Marco Rubio's, his whole sort of dominoes, Marco Rubio becomes the secretary of state, Ashley Moody gets become, you know, fills his Senate position, and then Uthmayer, instead of being elected as that position is in the state of Florida, he gets appointed. And so you have this unelected,
Starting point is 00:22:23 scandal-plagued yachtuts that is building a concentration camp in the Everglades. Coming up next, Harvard professor Alejandro de la Fuente is comparing the United States to his home country of Cuba. We'll find out why. Looking for a new way to get in on the action? NASCAR betting on DraftKings is where speed meets strategy. Whether it's a super speedway, short track, or road course, no one brings chaos quite
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Starting point is 00:24:19 Visit Specsavers.ca for details. President Trump is once again escalating his fight with Harvard, the nation's oldest, wealthiest and most esteemed university, not to mention the alma mater of eight American presidents. The administration moving to cut all federal ties with the prestigious school. Which he has maligned as a threat to democracy. The government is today asking federal agencies
Starting point is 00:24:40 to identify whether contracts with Harvard could be canceled or redirected elsewhere. The cancellations could add up to as much as $100 million in funds. The latest escalation of President Trump's battle with the university comes after Trump threatened Monday to take away $3 billion in grant money for medical and scientific research from Harvard.
Starting point is 00:24:58 This is an all out effort to make Harvard an example. The Department of Education has suggested that their tax exempt status is going to be reviewed. The Trump administration says today it will now block Harvard University from enrolling international students. In a letter, the government also says in part that all international students must, quote,
Starting point is 00:25:19 transfer from Harvard to maintain their non-immigrant status. Harvard has sued the government to block the order. The university's president describing the Trump administration's actions as retaliation for, quote, our refusal to surrender our academic independence. An internal cable sent by Secretary Marco Rubio is ordering all consulates and embassies to immediately freeze any future interviews
Starting point is 00:25:43 with potential foreign students that are seeking visas to study here inside of the United States, not just for Harvard, but for any college and university. This is, of course, a fight for Harvard, but really it's a fight about higher education in the United States. The Florida of today is the America of tomorrow as we've experienced this 25 year experiment in the really the the destruction or hijacking of public education here in the state of Florida. Now we are seeing it at a national or federal level. I should bring you up to date on the litigation. A judge just I think this past week has
Starting point is 00:26:27 indefinitely blocked the Trump administration's effort to stop foreign students from attending Harvard, which is probably a good thing because that's like 27% of the student body at the university and constitutes I think upwards of three $400 million economic impact in the Massachusetts area. Obviously, I have all these people traveling here and spending money here and living here. Joining us now is Alejandro de la Fuente.
Starting point is 00:26:53 He is a professor of history and African-American studies. He is the director of the Afro Latin American Research Institute at Harvard. He wrote an op-ed published in the Miami Herald and nationally last week. The headline reads, a Harvard professor asks, am I back in Cuba? Professor, thanks for being here. I know you fled the authoritarian dictatorship of Cuba for the freedom of the United States and now you are comparing what is happening here with what people have experienced and are experiencing back in the dictatorship.
Starting point is 00:27:32 Why? Well, because I see a troubling similarity, a troubling connection, and that is an attack on the freedoms that sustain the greatness of the American university system. This is not just about Harvard. The US has what I would characterize as the leading university system in the world. And that system, really, the greatness of that system is based on a bedrock principle, and that principle is freedom. You cannot really have academic
Starting point is 00:28:05 excellence without freedom and freedoms that must be protected. And in my view, the number one task of the federal government on that front is to protect those freedoms. Now the federal government is of course entitled to have concerns, to have issues, to raise questions. All that is normal. It happens all the time. It's processed. There are processes to handle those concerns. But the number one task doesn't change. And that is to protect the freedoms that have sustained the greatest university system in the world for the last, what, 80 years or so? And this is, so this is an imposition of ideological oversight, not some sort of fiscal oversight, but this is saying that the administration of Harvard and the professors of Harvard and the
Starting point is 00:28:59 students of Harvard have to act in line with the administration in order to enjoy continued funding? Is that the concern? Well, I think that at least to me the main issue was when I read the letter that the administration sent to the leadership at Harvard was all these references to viewpoint diversity and the need to recalibrate the viewpoints of the existing faculty and students. And I was thinking, how do you do that? In order to do that, first of all,
Starting point is 00:29:37 you need to establish the mix of existing viewpoints. Now think about it, because this, and that's what brought a deja vu to me you know I when I was a very young person younger even than you I was a junior schooler at the law school at the University of Havana and you know certain viewpoint purity was required to be part of the faculty at that university. And it gets ugly quickly because in order to do that, you have to periodically purge people who do not conform to those viewpoints. You have to create a system of vigilance to somehow police people. Of course, faculty naturally in an environment like that, the first thing they do is to retreat from away from controversial issues, is to basically follow the established line.
Starting point is 00:30:39 And that is death to academic excellence. That is death to knowledge production. You cannot produce knowledge under those circumstances. You can produce slogans, even good slogans, even really well-done slogans, but you're not going to produce leading knowledge that way. In addition, though, to kind of controlling and suppressing speech and thought. I'm concerned about knowledge and progress because Harvard is a research university and so part of what they are defunding taking billions and billions of dollars away some people might find the titles
Starting point is 00:31:18 of these studies somewhat frivolous but there is a significant amount of very important research intellectually intellectually, scientifically. What is it, in addition to, of course, the economic impact to the university, the community, the state of Massachusetts, what is being sacrificed here by defunding research that theoretically helps everybody, not just Harvard and Harvard students and professors, but the entire country and the federal government in the world. I think you sacrifice the future, and I think you sacrifice the greatness of the American university system,
Starting point is 00:31:53 not just Harvard. You know, there are many areas of basic research that the private sector cannot sustain for very basic reasons. You know, the private sector needs quick returns on their money. But some research, you know, takes decades in order to produce the kind of breakthroughs that have sustained the economic prosperity of this country for the last almost hundred years. So you sacrifice that. That is what you sacrifice.
Starting point is 00:32:24 You sacrifice the leadership of the American University system, which is a global leadership. And you sacrifice, therefore, the future, the future create a revisionism of their own family's history. Ted Cruz did it. He just did it live on a podcast where he talked about my father. I hate communists because my father was tortured in Cuba. Now he was tortured by Batista, but that's it. I was like, wait, wait, I'm sorry, wait, rewind, rewind that, that was- Records crashed. Yeah, Batista's not the leftist guy. He's not the left-wing dictator, he's the right-wing dictator, right?
Starting point is 00:33:13 So, and then of course, Marco Rubio, who for a time, his bio, had his family fleeing the revolution in 59, but in actuality, they also came over here in 1956 during the Bidista regime. And now we have at this moment in history, our first Cuban-American Secretary of State. And you saw in that that news package sends out a letter to embassies and consulates around the world saying, we are no longer going to
Starting point is 00:33:44 be interviewing potential foreign students are no longer going to be interviewing potential foreign students. We are going to have a more rigorous oversight of their social media to see ideologically where they stand so we don't let people who without the appropriate ideology or opinions come into our country. Now I have think, this is not DEI. I think Harvard is bringing in the best of the best from around the world to study in this institution. So I guess how this sort of two pronged there, how disappointing is it for you to see our first Cuban American secretary of state
Starting point is 00:34:19 participating in what you have defined as America kind of devolving into the tyranny of Cuba in terms of academic freedom. And what of these foreign students that they are attempting to block to come study here? You know, I have to say, I'm not gonna comment on Secretary Rubio personally, because I do not know him.
Starting point is 00:34:40 And when he was appointed, I actually thought that that was a good appointment and he was a competent appointment and I felt honored to have a fellow Cuban-American serving that in that role. My if I had a chance I would tell Secretary Rubio something that I suspect he already knows, which is that the students who apply to come to study in the U.S. do so first and foremost because they believe in the promise of the U.S. and of the American university system. And central to that belief and central to that admiration is our respect for freedom of expression, which is at the very center of the greatness of this academic system. So it is possible, I suppose, that some of the students who arrive in the U.S. from all
Starting point is 00:35:39 over the world, you know, are not perfect in some kind of way. But overall, we are talking about the brightest of the bright from all over the planet coming here to bring their talents, to bring their potential to our universities. Guess what? Many of these young people stay and then contribute enormously to our prosperity. Yeah, and you know Spain actually just approved expedited access to foreign students that have been barred from entering the US for its universities because they acknowledged what the professor is saying. So it's a brain drain.
Starting point is 00:36:20 It's a brain drain. These people are bringing in talents, you know, into these countries and other countries are taking advantage of the gaps we are building right now. We should want the best and brightest from all over the world. We always have. Yeah. And that's a priority that's changing. China would be delighted to keep those students who are now coming here. They would be delighted. They're probably applauding somewhere these things because they want to keep their brightest too, you know?
Starting point is 00:36:49 Of course they do. But you know, when I was in Cuba, I heard many times about robo de cerebros, which is like stealing brains. You don't need to steal anything. You create the opportunities, the brains find their way. You know, they find their way to greatness. They find their way to excellence.
Starting point is 00:37:07 They find their ways to American universities. You don't have to steal anything. We should not lose that. That is just a pipeline of excellence and it's fed from all over the world. Now, do you want a better deal than that? That's the best possible deal. Professor Alejandro de la Fuente, thank you for joining us.
Starting point is 00:37:33 We'll see you soon at Alligator Alcatraz. We're talking to you. Thank you, professor.

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