What A Day - The Deal with the Border Deal

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

A bipartisan immigration deal in Congress could be announced as soon as this week. The agreement would give the executive branch the legal authority to suspend asylum when migrant crossings surpass a certain threshold, among other things. That’s the part of the deal that President Biden referred to when he said late last week that he’d “shut down the border” if this new bill makes it into law.A new report by the Associated Press found that prison labor is connected to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food and agricultural products sold by some of the country’s biggest brands. It’s the latest indication that prison labor is used more widely than many people realize – and that these companies benefit from it while also trying to shield their connection to the public.And in headlines: Illinois could be the next state to take Donald Trump off their presidential primary ballot, Bayer was ordered to pay $2.25 billion to a man who said he developed cancer from using the company's weed killer, and a New Jersey animal shelter said it would neuter feral cats named after people’s exes for Valentine's Day.Show Notes:AP: “Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands” – http://tinyurl.com/ypxoooooLouisiana Illuminator: “Louisiana still leads nation for state prisoners held in local jails” – http://tinyurl.com/yr9wzyvrWhat A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Tuesday, January 30th. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And I'm Trevelle Anderson, and this is What A Day. The podvets should be excited that an exploration company recently announced it may have found Amelia Earhart's aircraft at the bottom of the Pacific. But I know at least one host who says, let her go, and that host is me. What do you have against Amelia Earhart? The Malaysia airplane is still missing. Y'all want to find some missing planes? I'll get a list together. On today's show, a new AP

investigation found the extensive amount of prison labor used to prop up the agricultural industry. It's basically modern day slavery. Plus, Illinois officials decide today whether Trump should stay on the state's primary ballot. But first, let's talk about the U.S. border with Mexico, because a bipartisan immigration deal could be announced as soon as this week. I will get to that in a moment. But as we know, border security is always a contentious political issue. And we recently discussed the Supreme Court ruling that allowed federal officials to remove the barbed wire that was placed along the southern border by Texas. Well, now Republican attorneys general across

the country are standing with Texas and declaring, quote, if the Biden administration won't do its job to secure our border and keep Americans safe, it should step aside to let the states do the job for them. Led by Iowa and Utah, 26 Republican attorneys general said in a letter Monday to President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the federal government isn't doing anything to stop what they're calling a crisis. In December, for example, U.S. immigration officials processed more than 302,000 migrants along the southern border, which was a record high. You know what really gets my goat about this? That's the first time I've ever used that phrase in my life. These Republicans saying, oh, we want to solve the problem, but there's never any discussion about why people are risking life, limb, and health to cross the border.

There's never any kind of interrogation about what is the source of the issue. It's just playing prison politics with each other. And it's not the vibe I want in 2024. Okay, so going back to Congress, we have spoken on the show before about how the GOP was at one point withholding money to support Ukraine and Israel, unless some deeply conservative immigration policies got passed. We kind of passed that hurdle, but now there are reports of a deal. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So as that group of Republican attorneys general are, you know, doing what they're doing, the Biden administration and a small group of bipartisan lawmakers have actually been engaged

in weeks of closed door negotiations, trying to come to some sort of agreement on how to manage the unprecedented levels of people coming into the country without legal authorization. CBS News described this impending deal, which could be announced this week, as being the, quote, first major bipartisan overhaul of the nation's immigration system since the 1990s. Okay, so we hear the terms bipartisan, we get excited. However, there have been some bipartisan bad deals in our day as well. We know that. Absolutely. So break it down for us. Who's involved? What's the deal entail? What's going on? The folks in the room with the Biden administration working out the kinks of the deal are GOP Senator James Lankford,

Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. He was on CNN's State of the Union this past weekend. Take a listen. We are sort of finalizing the last pieces of text right now. This bill could be ready to be on the floor of the United States Senate next week, but it won't be if Republicans decide that they want to keep this issue unsettled for political purposes. So the deal would do a few things, but perhaps the biggest change is that it would give the executive branch, aka the president, the legal authority to suspend asylum when migrant crossings surpass a certain threshold. That threshold would be when the daily average over a week of migrant crossings hits

5,000 or 8,500 in a single day. And there's supposed to be a limit on the number of days each year the president could invoke this authority. And when invoked, migrants would face swift deportation to Mexico or their home country. It's this part of the deal that had President Biden late last week saying that he'd, quote, shut down the border if this new bill makes it into law. The idea that if you need asylum, if you happen to cross the border after a certain number of people, you don't need asylum anymore. Or the idea that, like, if you're the 5,000th and first person to cross, then you might

get deported back to your home country, which you were seeking asylum from. People seem to have forgotten what asylum is. Yeah. I feel like I'm losing it, but I'm not losing it. They're losing it. So what else is going to be in the deal? Tell me so my blood pressure can keep going up. Well, on that point specifically, you're absolutely right. The way they're setting this up, somebody who comes in after that threshold would automatically get deported back. They do have these special circumstances that they say that folks can be approved in emergency situations. But I think the point that you just made there is really right.

And then some of the other things that they are reportedly discussing, including reducing the asylum review process to six months. It's currently a process that could take a few years for folks. They also want to expand the scope of authority for expedited removals. They want to hire more asylum officers, border agents, and immigration judges to speed things up as well as raising the standard of proof in asylum interviews. And for migrants who pass their initial screenings, they'd be released with immediate eligibility to work in the U.S. That's something the Democrats have been pushing for at front of mind for them. There's also a proposal to provide lawyers to asylum seekers, as well as one that would limit what's called immigration parole authority. That is how the

Biden administration has been able to resettle more than 1 million refugees and migrants. So all of those many different things I just mentioned, there's really a mixed bag of options, some conservative things, some things that the Democrats really wanted. But the deal notably, at least to me, would not give legal status to any of the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. undocumented, including the Dreamers. Still, President Biden called the emerging deal the, quote, toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we've ever had in our country.

I don't know that that's saying much. If the Republicans are signing on, I don't feel great about it, but we will see. Does this deal even have a chance of passing, given what we're dealing with here? It's not likely, largely because we know that the Republican-controlled House under Speaker Mike Johnson has already been pushing for even stricter changes to the asylum system and immigration policies overall. And then we have that group of far-righters, you know, in the House who are holding their votes hostage and don't believe in compromise. Not to mention the presumed Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has said that he'd, quote, rather have no bill than a bad bill. So, you know,

a comment like that just put a couple new batteries in the backs of folks. Yeah, totally. So, you know, who knows? Maybe they'll surprise us. Maybe they will vote in favor of it. They're not going to give Biden a win. What we do know is it has nothing to do with whether or not the bill is good, helps people, whatever. It's the politics. So now on to a new story about prison labor. Travelle, are you familiar with Angola?

The prison, not the country. No, I don't know neither one of them. I am particularly glad that this is not a geography test, though. I, too, am glad this is not a geography test. For people who do not know, Angola is largely considered one of, if not the absolute worst prison in America. It has a little bit of competition, but it's up there. There are some particularly harrowing stories about Angola, where the state's death row is. There are about 6,300 prisoners there.

It's on a former slave plantation in Louisiana. And in fact, it is called Angola because most of the slaves who used to be on the actual plantation were from Angola. And even though slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation was a while ago, they didn't change the name. So that's what we're working with. People incarcerated there are still forced to work the fields day in and day out for pennies. Incarcerated people have had to do jobs like make coffins for the people on death row facing execution. Just very traumatic and hard stuff. And it's also the only prison I know of with a gift shop. Yes, you can go to the gift shop at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Just really wild stuff. Clint

Smith, who did the podcast Justice in America with me, has an incredible chapter in his book about Angola. I highly recommend it, How the Word Was Passed. That's all to say that yesterday, a new report by the Associated Press found that prison labor is connected to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food and agricultural products sold by some of the country's biggest brands. And Angola is one of the many prisons using incarcerated people to work without pay to benefit corporations. This is just like the latest indication that prison labor is used more widely than people outside of prison realize. And that these companies benefit from it while also trying to shield their connection to it from the public, right?

Yeah, I feel like the list of companies that we as good progressives and liberals are supposed to be boycotting keeps getting longer and longer. You're not going to like what I have to tell you. Well, lay it on us. How widespread is this problem? Which companies are using prison labor? Let us know what it is. It's not good. It's a lot of companies.

And it's certainly some companies that own things you have in your fridge, in your pantry right now. And that goes for everybody listening. The brands range from General Mills to Coca-Cola to McDonald's, which right there, that's a good 60% of my diet. Like, we're in the same level. Same. Like, it's so bad. And I understand that that's not great about my diet, but I can't change overnight. And that's only the beginning.

There are all these other brands, many of which you likely may have purchased in recent memory. The AP said that most of the companies it reached out to about this story did not respond, big surprise. And even though agriculture makes up only a small, small fraction of the prison workforce, the report found that at least $200 million worth of goods and products can be traced back to prison labor in the past six years. So it's both like a wild amount and also only the beginning of ways in which prison labor is exploited for corporate benefit. Wildly enough, many of these companies have stated policies rejecting the use of prison labor, but they're doing it secretly anyway. And chances are that the $200 million figure that I just said is actually far below the real number because it doesn't account for tens of millions of dollars in sales to governments.

So it's not good. Yeah. And as you just mentioned, it's not like these workers are being paid much if they're being paid anything. Exactly. So most people working in prison are paid at best a few cents an hour for their labor, like literally a few cents. Many are paid nothing at all.

Some maybe get other benefits like work for 30 years and they'll give you six hours off your sentence or whatever it is. And others just are kind of forced. They're in a pretty coercive situation. Without fail, every time I talk about this, someone's like, what do they even need money for? They're in prison. So I would like to answer that right now. Everything in prison costs money and more money than it would cost you and me to do the same thing or use the same thing. So phone calls can be very expensive, dollars per minute in some cases. Anything from the commissary is marked up like crazy. You're paying a wild amount of money for like one thing of Top Ramen or whatever. Yeah. My brother was incarcerated for entirely too long.

And when I tell you that we spent a lot of money just trying to make sure that he, you know, had some basic things like a bag of chips is like $5, a t-shirt, you know, is like, like everything is overpriced. Every single thing. Everything. It's really upsetting. And it's not just the pay. Like that's part of it.

But they don't have basic labor protections if you're in prison. They don't have safety standards. They don't have the ability to file an OSHA complaint about working conditions. There's no workers comp. They're often forced to work excessively long hours without breaks, right? There aren't like protections for your weekend. Like everything the labor movement has pulled off since the beginning of the labor movement, like basically doesn't apply to people in prison. And at Angola in particular, in that Louisiana heat, incarcerated

people are in the fields working in over 100 degree weather, leading to heat stroke and other health issues. I mean, it's just cruel. It's deeply cruel. Yeah. And then meanwhile, right, these companies are given a tax break for using the labor of incarcerated people, which, you know, I guess is an incentive for them, but is a really weird incentive to me. Yeah, noted mom and pop shop Coca-Cola is getting a tax break. It's terrible. And the way that these tax breaks are sold is like, oh, we can train people who are incarcerated to have a skill like HVAC, you know, repair or car repair, and then we're benefiting them. But the truth is that so often, this labor we're talking about is unskilled labor, and it's labor nobody else wants to do.

There is a reason that it's being left to people who have no other choice, because it's brutal. It's really, really brutal. In other Louisiana news, Trayvill, a recent report found that more than half of prisoners sentenced to state prison in Louisiana are forced to serve their time in local jails. This is a very wild statistic, and it's a real indicator that things in Louisiana remain very, very wrong, even compared to the rest of America, where, as you know, the prison system is already particularly cruel. Yeah, and I feel like I hear a number of listeners in their head being like, oh, these are prisoners. What does it matter that they're in the jail versus, you know, the prison? So for those who don't know, can you explain why it's, you know, not ideal that a person would serve out their sentence in a local jail? Yeah, absolutely. So jail is a place for short-term stays, mostly. A night, two nights,

five nights. It is not a place built for people to stay there long-term. And so they're often much worse than state prison. You might not have a real cell, for example. You might not have a real bed. You are packed in with lots of other people. You have new roommates every single night. The issues that people are facing that lead them to kind of cycle in and out of jail might be ones that, like, you're not trying to sleep in the same room as them. You don't have basic things like facilities. You don't have dedicated outdoor space. You don't have an expected schedule. You don't have even things like health care, like prison health care is bad. It's very bad. Jail health care is somehow even worse than that. So I once had someone tell me that they'd rather spend 10 years upstate than

one year in jail. And I'm sure that's not everybody's opinion, but it's just to signal how much worse it is to spend that amount of time in jail. So what's the reason behind this? Why are there so many state prisoners in the local jails? Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country at last count, and it's notoriously cheap. So it doesn't have enough room to house all the people that it forces into prison. It is telling these people they have to go to prison and then saying, oh, we don't have any room for you in prison.

It's just crazy. But they have one party who can really benefit from this arrangement, and that is sheriffs. Sheriffs run the local jails. Louisiana has some of the most brutal sheriffs in the country, and every time they house someone who should be in a state prison, they get money from the state. So basically basically this arrangement lets the state get away with failing to build enough infrastructure while still putting tons of people in prison. I don't want the state to build more prisons, but then they have to stop sentencing all these people to prison. And it gives the sheriffs a benefit. They're winning and it's absolutely awful for people who have to endure it.

We'll link to both of these great stories that I just talked about in our show notes. And remember what we said about supporting journalism. Go give them a click. You can do it. That is the latest for now. We will be back after some ads. Let's get to some headlines. Headlines.

The main United Nations relief agency, known as UNRWA, said yesterday that its funding could dry up by the end of February. That's because over a dozen countries suspended their support of it after Israel's accusation against some of the agency's workers. On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces accused 12 employees of the agency of participating in Hamas's October 7th attack or in its aftermath. UNRWA fired several of those people, but it is still conducting an investigation into the claim. The accusation, however, led several countries, including the U.S., who is the agency's largest donor, to pause their funding while investigations take place. There are about 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza right now and 30,000 across the Middle East as a whole. All of those employees could lose their salaries

if even a few donors don't restore their funding. And keep in mind, UNRWA is the main agency coordinating and supporting the distribution of the very little aid that is able to come into Gaza while also hosting 1.2 million people in schools and centers who have been displaced. If this agency goes under, it's pretty unclear what other group could or will step in. So far, Israel's invasion has displaced more than 80% of Gaza's population,

decimated their health system, starved civilians, and killed more than 26,000 people. Illinois could be the next state to take Trump off their presidential primary ballot after a retired state judge argued that the former president's involvement in the January 6th insurrection should disqualify him from the race. The judge, Clark Erickson, made the recommendation to the Illinois State Elections Board on Sunday, saying that the courts should decide the matter. The board, which has an even four-to-four ideological split, is expected to weigh in on the matter today. The move is indicative of a larger trend among blue states who are trying to get Trump off the ticket before Super Tuesday, which

Illinois is a part of and is in just five weeks, over his involvement in the Capitol riots. You'll remember that Colorado was the first to do so back in December when the state Supreme Court ruled that Trump was ineligible for the White House. The court argued that the former president violated the 14th Amendment for inciting an insurrection, and Trump appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court shortly after. The high court will hear arguments on this issue next month. The parent company of agrochemical giant Monsanto, Bayer, was ordered to pay $2.25 billion to a man who said he developed cancer from using Roundup, the company's weed killer.

The 49-year-old Pennsylvania man sued Bayer after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and claimed that it was a result of years of using Roundup on his property. In a unanimous verdict, a jury on Friday awarded him $250 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages. For their part, Bayer said it planned to appeal the jury's verdict, saying it conflicted with scientific evidence and regulatory and scientific assessments on Roundup. That's according to an emailed statement reported by several publications. Monsanto has recently won 10 of 16 Roundup trials and more than 100,000 claims have been made in the U.S. against the company over Roundup. Most plaintiffs also allege that the weed killer caused them to develop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

And finally, this Valentine's Day, a New Jersey animal shelter is offering to neuter your ex. Well, sort of, kind of, okay? For just $50, Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center says it will name a feral cat after your ex and then spay or neuter the cat before being released. Okay, interesting choice here, people. The promotion is part of the shelter's Trap, Neuter, Return program, which the shelter said is a, quote, vital component of feral cat population control as it breaks the breeding cycle and stops the birth of unwanted cats in our community. And the donation helps ensure that spay and neuter surgeries can be offered at a reduced cost.

That's according to an Instagram post by the shelter, which shows a Valentine's Day card with the quote, because some things shouldn't breed, which y'all are doing a lot there. A lot. The ASPCA also supports trap new to return monitor programs and describes the method as humane and effective in managing community cat populations. Okay. I do appreciate that the animals are feral. I just think that's a nice touch you know i just think that if you really hate your ex that bad where you want to pay people 50 to fake name a cat right that they're going to

release back out into the wild you might might need some therapy, perhaps. Maybe go to church and pray about it. I don't know. I, as a rule, agree. And I would say any other day of the year, this is a no. However, Valentine's Day is a miserable holiday. And people just need to find a little bit of comfort where they can. On Valentine's Day, I believe in revenge.

All other days, let's get some help. But Valentine's Day, act out. So you are endorsing this behavior. Okay, Josie. All bets are off on Valentine's Day. And those are the headlines. One more thing before we go. Today is National Help America Vote Day. This day was established by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to encourage people across the U.S. to get involved in the electoral process by signing up to be a poll worker. By encouraging more people to become poll workers in their communities, Help America Vote Day is addressing the critical shortage of poll workers, strengthening our democracy,

inspiring greater civic engagement and volunteerism, and helping to ensure free and fair elections this November. Head to PowerThePolls.org slash votesaveamerica to check out our new action finder and sign up to be a poll worker. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Valentine's chocolates are so last year. And tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just what those Valentine's cards at the shelter look like, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. I'm Treyville Anderson.

And happy birthday, Leo. The best producer in the game. Bring me back a birthday present from Italy. It's your birthday, but... what a day is a production of crooked media it's recorded and mixed by bill lance our show's producer it's itsy kintania raven yamam Raven Yamamoto and Natalie Bettendorf are our associate producers. And our showrunner is Leo Duran. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.