The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Proposed Immigration Changes

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Immigration was a central focus of Donald Trump's 2024 campaign. Now that he's set to take office, what changes are expected to U.S. immigration policy? This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. 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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Morgan from Lexington, Kentucky. I found out this week that after five years of general surgery residency, a year of research, a year of breast surgery fellowship, and countless hours of studying, I passed my general surgery oral boards, and I'm now board certified. This podcast was recorded at 1.35 pm Eastern time on Wednesday, December 4th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you listen, but I'll finally be picking out frames for all of my degrees and diplomas, including my board certification. Okay, here's the show. Wow, congratulations.

That's no small feat. That's awesome. So much work. Yeah. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political work. Yeah. Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez, I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and correspondent.

And today we also have MPR's Jasmine Garz, who's with us. She covers immigration for us. Hey, Jasmine. Hi. So today on the show, we're gonna be talking about how immigration policy in the US may change when president-elect Donald Trump takes office. Jasmine, I want you to remind us of some of the things Trump campaigned on. Obviously,

immigration was a huge issue for his campaign. What do we know about what he had his sights set on when it comes to changing immigration policy? Yeah, I mean, I would say it was like the centerpiece of his campaign. And a couple of things that he's promised is namely mass deportations. He said he's going to enact the biggest deportation in US history. And then of course, securing the border, closing down the border, which I'm at the border right now and Trump is inheriting a very quiet border actually, but that's like the promise that he's gonna really make it more secure. Yeah and I know you've been talking to folks who are likely to be

impacted by these actions. How are they reacting to all this? What are you hearing from them? I mean the big thing I'm hearing is you know people reading up and studying on their rights, and I've also been spending a lot of time with mixed status families, meaning, you know, mom is undocumented, or husband is undocumented, wife is undocumented, and kids are a citizen. And what I'm hearing a lot of is people preparing for the worst case scenario. An estimated 11 million American citizens are part of a mixed status family. And so that's a lot of people. And what I've been hearing is

these plan B preparations. You know, what the kids should do if the parents don't make it back home. You know, what to do with the savings a lot of contingency plans that I'm hearing about and Dominic I wonder what this says about how much of a mandate Donald Trump has when it comes to immigration voters have said consistently during You know running up to the election that this was a main issue for them and that they trusted Trump Obviously more than his main opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. What do you make of how much of a mandate he has coming into next year? Well, I think that mandates are always overread by presidents,

especially presidents who don't get 50% of the vote. And even when they do, in the modern era, you don't really get a very large percentage, certainly nothing in the 60s like we may have seen decades earlier. And even then, scholars have said that they feel like those mandates are over read, but that doesn't stop presidents from using their victory to say that they have a mandate. We've seen that from presidents in both parties.

And certainly Trump was more favored by the general electorate when it comes to how to handle immigration. And you know, he thinks that he has the wind at his back on this, especially with his base. It has been the animating issue since Trump came on the political scene. It's worth noting comprehensive immigration reform has long been on the wishlist for Congress, but there's been little to no appetite to actually address it. But Trump also would not be the first president to take action from the White House. I mean, you know, Congress has been unable to pass comprehensive immigration

reform in a very long time. And so the response to that has been executive actions, right? I mean, whether it's former President Barack Obama with DACA or even this year, we saw a string of executive actions from President Joe Biden about virtually closing down the border to asylum seekers and executive actions attempting to offer certain protections to mixed status marriages. And so Congress is so unable to do any kind of bipartisan legislation or reform that the executive action has kind of become the only way to budge on immigration.

Nat Sennsberg Yeah, like, I mean, a comprehensive immigration overhaul is really the only way through what's kind of a very messy situation. I mean, the fact is there are far too few judges in this country who adjudicate whether or not somebody should be in the country or not, or if they have an asylum exemption. And people are in the country for extended periods of time before they can get a hearing before a judge. The 2013 legislation that former President Obama pushed for would have added a significant number of immigration judges. It would have done a lot on border security, and it would have had a pathway for citizenship

for the millions of people who are in the country illegally. And there were some pretty strict restrictions on how they would be able to achieve that. And it did appeal to the US Senate. It got 68 votes. Almost nothing gets 68 votes nowadays, but it was killed by the Republican-controlled House. And ever since then, there really has been no movement to change that. You know, President Obama, when he won re-election, the Republican National Committee put out a growth and opportunity project point to say that in 2013, that without being in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, that the party would shrink

to a base that was only people who were as part of a smaller and smaller share of the Republican base. They nominate Donald Trump, went in a very different direction, and yet Trump won a record share of the Latino vote, 46 percent in this election. So I don't think the lesson that Republicans are going to take from the 2024 election is that they need to be more backing or more in favor of a comprehensive overhaul. Okay, well, let's take a quick break. More in a moment. NPR brings you the updates you need on the day's biggest headlines. The Senate narrowly passed the debt ceiling bill that will prevent the country from defaulting on its loans.

Stories from across the world. Knowing how to forage and to live with the land is integral to Amis culture. And down your block. From CPR News, this is Colorado Matters. And you can find all of that and more in your pocket. Download the NPR app today. And we're back. Jasmine, another thing that is kind of an open question here is how cities are going to react to some of these immigration policies, right? A number of cities, mostly run by Democrats, have already said that they wouldn't use local law enforcement to assist in federal immigration activities.

How are you seeing cities, as well as states, sort of responding ahead of inauguration? Yeah, I think we're going to see a patchwork. I mean, we see Republican cities and states who have already for quite some time now been attempting to pass their own take on immigration enforcement, really jumping on the Trump administration bandwagon places like Florida, like Texas, right? In the case of Florida, Florida has some of the most stringent immigration policy in the country already. So those states are fully in support. And then we're already seeing blue states and cities pushing back.

You know, we have the mayor of Denver saying, you know, we're not going to allow these mass deportation programs here in Denver. And I think that's going to be one of the really big fights that we're going to be seeing almost as soon as Trump takes office is these blue cities and states pushing back against immigration enforcement. I do want to take a moment to talk about the optics of all this. In Trump's first term, he did get a lot of criticism for his administration's family separation policy, which split up migrant families as they entered the U.S. without

prior authorization. Jasmine, in your reporting, do you see the incoming administration's members maybe drawing lessons from all that and how they're messaging what they want to do starting next year? Yeah, 100%. I mean, one thing that has been really striking to me is to hear Tom Homan, the new border czar appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, talk about immigration enforcement. A lot of what he has said has to do with child trafficking

and human trafficking. And when I hear that I definitely think that the Republican Party has kind of taken a cue from what happened in the last Trump administration which were these terrible optics of children being separated from their family. I think there's a reality which is you know people who voted or who support mass deportation and what that's going to look like on the ground, especially with, you know, businesses and the economic impact. I think it's one thing to wish for that or envision that and I think it's another to find that suddenly the

food chain is disrupted or you know there are less employees available at a business and I think that is another thing that could be a really challenging optic. I really think that it's gonna depend on how this plays out. I don't think that we have any real sense of the way people are gonna react if they're watching images on television of children being ripped from their arms of their parents and sent away and then those stories are followed later. If you don't see a lot of that, then it's going to be something that Trump is going

to say that he did a good job on. Of course, this is really where sort of as the cliche goes, the rubber hits the road because people have really contradictory views when it comes to immigration. I mean, views really aren't fully formed in public opinion on this. goes the rubber hits the road because people have really contradictory views when it comes to immigration. I mean, views really aren't fully formed in public opinion on this. I mean, take for example, our NPR PBS News Marist poll from late September, early October, 59% said that all immigrants in the US illegally should be deported. But in the same poll, 57% said that America's openness to people from all over the world

is essential to who we are as a nation and then in the Exit polls in an election that Donald Trump won 56% said that immigrants in the u.s Illegally should be offered the chance to apply for legal status just 40% said that they should be deported And I think that what that says is that when things are not that consistent, that it's possible to change people's minds, that there's room for this to go sideways or for people to be in favor of people being deported. Yeah.

I think there are a lot of instances where the politics of this seem to be kind of all over the place. I mean, a good example, Jasmine, is in New York City. The mayor there, Eric Adams, has expressed that he plans on working with the Trump administration, you know, when it comes to immigration. What are you hearing from folks in New York? I mean, yeah, I think that we are going to see some of that. I mean, New York, kind of its whole identity is based on immigration and the myth of the

immigrant who comes and pulls himself up from his bootstraps. And Adams has for a long time been kind of defying that stance. You know, it is also true that there was a very concerted campaign to overwhelm cities like New York City, like Chicago with newly arrived migrants. And on the other hand, Adams has been more and more aligning himself with a Trump administration. You know, what I'm hearing is people just bracing, preparing themselves in the immigrant community and not assuming that New York is this safe space for immigrants that it's always been, just preparing to kind of put up a fight.

And you know, even anecdotally, just really interesting is whenever I've talked to Trump supporters in New York, in other parts of the country, and we really get down to the nitty gritty of mass deportations, at least in an intimate conversation, I usually hear, at the end of the day, this would be something that would collapse our economy. It would severely disrupt the food chain. It's not feasible. So there is kind of this acknowledgement of

a fantasy versus a reality in practice and what that will look like. Well, I think we'll leave it there for today. Jasmine, thank you so much for bringing your reporting to the podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast.