The NPR Politics Podcast - How The Trump Admin Uses Immigration Policy To Show Force

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

As a candidate, Donald Trump campaigned on carrying out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. As president, he's used immigration policy as a backdrop for other shows of force. We explore how he uses immigration as a political issue.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Elena Moore, and immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR's Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at waltonfamilyfoundation.org. Hi, this is Rowan in Dallas, Texas, and I am working on a props list for a theater show while my cat Greg sits in my lap and purrs. This podcast was recorded at 12.22 p.m. on Thursday, August 21st. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. Oh, such good purring. Wow. She too is auditioning for a job as an NPR reporter.

Because as we know, the pipeline from theater star, child actress, failed actress, in my account to journalists is quite strong. I was a debate kid, not a theater kid, so sorry. You're outnumbered right now. You are outnumbered. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Elena Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Jimenez-Abusio and I cover immigration policy. And today on the show, we're taking a look at immigration and immigration courts. These courts are busy. They're understaffed and they are under even more strain as the government ramps up immigration enforcement efforts. We want to focus on a few courtrooms in particular, those in lower Manhattan. And Jimena, you spent a couple of days there. You've also spent time in other immigration courts. So tell us what these ones were like and how they're different from the ones you've visited before.

So the ones that I've visited before, they're very administrative. I mean, in general, immigration courts are you can describe them as a bit sterile, echoy, almost like basement-like. There aren't a lot of windows. And people go there to ultimately admit that they have entered the country without legal status or here in the country without legal status. And here are the reasons why they should stay if they have valid claims. You know, these courts are generally very empty. The people who go there for that business. So the immigrants, the attorneys with the Department of Homeland Security, judges, court staff, that's usually who's in there. What is different about the New York courts is that. The New York courts, along with other courts, have become the epicenter of what you can see as the Trump immigration enforcement agenda, which is, you know, there's a much larger enforcement presence in the courtroom hallways, in the doorways. You see people very, very nervous to show up to what should be a routine hearing. You hear anecdotes of people not coming at all. And I think there's a different air of pressure that across the country has. has increased in even the courts that I've been in before that, you know, when I happened to show up, nothing was really happening. When I happened to show up in New York, a lot of things were happening.

Yeah. So I want you to tell us more about that, why you chose to go to New York and what you found when you got there. So I chose to go to New York because 26 federal plaza is one of the federal buildings that has immigration courtroom floors. And that building in particular has become notorious for these violent scenes that are caught on social media, on national and local news of, you know, people being detained by masked, sunglasses, completely covered federal agents that some of them say ICE, you know, immigration is in customs enforcement, some of them just say federal police. Some of them just say police. and to detain one person coming out of their routine court appointment, you see, you know, half a dozen of these men and women, you know, take them and they disappear into an elevator or a stairwell. And that has resulted in, you know, you have Democrats, you have politicians, you have clergy, you have advocates all coming into these really narrow halls to try and stop it or try to document it. And, you know, you have all these moving parts in this otherwise little known, you know, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Department of Justice, you know, kind of corner of the world really become the cluster that is this enforcement scene. Okay. So Jimenez, then, that being the case so much, I guess, of what we've seen from the Trump administration is about optics. So how does what you've seen in the Manhattan court fit into that problem?

broader strategy. You know, I think what is happening in the Manhattan court is a part of the broader connection that the Trump administration is making in terms of showing physical force. You know, if you come to a routine hearing, there is the risk that you get detained. You see in these courthouses, not just in New York posters that are asking migrants to consider self-deporting that are hung up by the Department of Homeland Security, separate agency. You see that people are very nervous to just be there. And at the same time, in this particular courtroom, people have been, people as in a journalist, have been allowed to go in to photograph to get video in a different way than we've seen in a lot of these other places that, again,

normally don't get this kind of broader attention. So the attention is part of the goal. Yes. So, Jimino, when people are at immigration court and then they get detained, What are the reasons that they would be getting detained? The administration says that they are being detained because they are here without legal status. The due process that immigrants get is limited, but it does exist at varying levels. And, you know, when you go into, you know, sit in on some of these initial hearings, you do hear the judge, ask the lawyers or ask the people sitting there, you know, do you admit to being in. in the country without legal status effectively, and they say yes. And it doesn't stop there. And I think that's where the due process part gets a bit confused because even if you are here without legal

status, there could be reasons to not deport you or there could be reasons to not deport you to a specific place. You know, if you are able to prove that you are afraid to go back to your home country for whatever reason. And that second part is really what's supposed to get litigated. So definitely there are plenty of cases that go through most people that go through immigration court are not represented by a lawyer and those are easier to kind of process through and most people, you know, end up with final orders of deportation. But, you know, this ability to say, wait a minute, yes, I'm here without legal status and there might be reasons that I should not be removed, that's the due process that I think a lot of lawyers and advocates are saying is being undercut when you can walk out. of that hearing and be detained anyways. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and when we get back the politics of all this. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation,

working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at walton family foundation.org. And we're back. And Elena, I want to talk about the politics of immigration enforcement in the second Trump administration. The administration is focusing on cities led by Democrats. These are cities that in many cases have so-called sanctuary city policies that have very limited cooperation with the federal government and immigration authorities. What's the news there? Well, yeah, Trump has like long targeted these places since his first term. But really since coming back into office, we've seen him take action there again. There was an executive

of order he signed in April that directed DHS and DOJ to pinpoint places and threaten possible federal funding cuts if they don't change those policies that you just kind of summarized. And, you know, cut to earlier this month, we're seeing next steps there. The DOJ put out a list of, you know, two dozen or so cities and states saying that they're standing in the way of Trump's immigration enforcement policy. And actually, the DOJ sent letters demanding these places commit to changing their policies by earlier this week. Spoiler alert, a handful of these leaders did not commit to doing that. And they are coming out strongly, some of them, you know, either disputing the sanctuary

city label and defending their own policies, you know, saying the administration's actions were unjust. And I think we've seen that most clearly and strongly from Boston's mayor, Michelle Wu. Take a listen to how she talked about this at a press conference earlier this week. Unlike the Trump administration, Boston follows. the law and Boston will not back down from who we are and what we stand for. Presumably they're following different laws. Right. Also, I should say we have not heard from all, you know, almost 30 of these leaders that are kind of called out from these letters. But hearing from around a handful, they've been pretty strong. And I want to ask how this relates to something

we talked about earlier this week on the pod, which is Washington, D.C. The White House and the president have essentially federalized law enforcement in Washington, D.C. We are seeing the National Guard. We are seeing various federal police. You know, this is a city that now has a huge presence. And a lot of the arrests that have been taking place based on the White House numbers, a lot of them have been immigration related. Right. Well, Trump is lumping all of these points into his larger message of law and order, which is almost a tale as old as time, right? In modern politics history now dating back to, what, the 80s? At least.

You know, painting these, you know, blue cities as dangerous and full of crime and arguing the administration needs to take kind of whatever steps necessary to rectify that. And, yeah, like you said, we saw that firsthand in D.C. And I think since then, kind of to the point that Hemena made earlier in the podcast, this is a multi-agency effort. We're seeing federal officials from different parts of the government kind of rally on this issue. And it's a reminder that this really is a priority for the administration.

After the federalization of the D.C. police force that we saw was also the move to allow D.C. police to facilitate and assist with immigration enforcement. And, you know, I think that there just continues to be this use of immigration enforcement as a way to get at criminality, the use of criminality as a way to get at immigration enforcement. And we continue to see them do this in very. cities. Also, I'm no legal expert, obviously, but we do know that, you know, the president has more jurisdiction over the District of Columbia. And so it's a very strong place for him to send a signal to other cities that he likely does not have as much immediate jurisdiction over. And that's, you know, now playing out in the courts. We're seeing the DOJ sue multiple cities over their immigration policy. And the messaging that's coming from the White House about what they're doing in

D.C., what they're doing elsewhere is not as much about immigration as it is about immigrants as criminals. And we've seen that again and again coming from this White House. And Elena, you've been reporting on how Democrats are responding to this or how they deal with this because it does put them in something of a bind. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely exposed a sore subject for Democrats. I think if you look at the response to Trump's press conference about D.C. last week, so many, officials were quick to come out and criticize, you know, maybe the lawfulness of it and also cite these, you know, statistics that show that violent crime in D.C. is actually going down and same nationwide. But, you know, a lot of Americans don't feel that way. And we've talked about that

with lots of issues. You know, polling and stats can say one thing, but people feel what they feel. And, you know, a majority of Americans surveyed in a Gallup poll from last fall described crime as an extremely or very serious problem. That's nothing to sneeze at. And I think it's prompted some Democrats to really kind of take a look in the mirror and think, okay, how do we address and validate those concerns and go past just, well, actually, here's the fact check. I talked to Heidi Heitkamp about that. She's a former senator from North Dakota, a Democrat, and someone who had to tow this line between having her more centrist message in a Republican state and still being a Democrat. And here's how she put, watching Democrats characterize this as a perception issue.

That's insulting to the people who don't feel safe. Quit calling it a perception. Start saying these are real concerns and real problems. And we need to have a discussion about what works and what doesn't work. So it's almost like first step is, I hear you, I see you, which I think we've talked about with lots of issue disconnects with the Democrats. So add this to maybe the list. Certainly the economy is another one of those where the Biden administration kept saying,

oh, this is just transitory inflation, and everybody's like, but stuff's expensive. Yeah, but I feel bad. Yeah. And it gets really complicated with the semantics of all this. Like, you know, you have, you know, Department of Homeland Security officials, White House officials, saying that they're going after the worst of the worst, right? Like, that is their tagline. What does that really mean?

You know, some of the latest data that we have from ICE shows that there's, you know, nearly 60,000 people currently in immigration detention. And of those, only 30 percent are convicted criminals. But, you know, let's break that down even further. What is a convicted criminal? Is it someone that got a DUI? Is it someone that was caught with possession or a nonviolent offense? Or is it like a very violent felony? And I think that is the conversation that the administration has for months been pushing everyone to have. And it's, it's a politically, it's a losing game, right? Like to Elena's point, you know, it makes people, you know, defend things. Maybe they don't want to defend or dismiss things. Maybe they don't want to dismiss. And, you know, I think one of the strategy

that Democrats and advocates have taken is to bring it back to this idea of due process. And, you know, even if you are facing criminal or civil charges, like there's a limited due process to be had. But it gets really messy and really rhetorically muddy. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Elena Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Hima Bustillo and I cover immigration policy.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. PR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at waltonfamilyfoundation.org.