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Immigration Issues from Deportations to Revoking Citizenship · Bloomberg Law

0:02
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio.
0:10
Speaker 2: Federal judges in Minnesota have posed a barrier to the
0:14
Speaker 2: Trump administration's immigration priorities, dismissing high-profile cases and prosecutions and
0:21
Speaker 2: accusing government lawyers of failing to comply with court orders
0:25
Speaker 2: in some cases. The Justice Department is now escalating its
0:29
Speaker 2: battle with the judiciary, filing a complaint against the federal
0:33
Speaker 2: judges in Minnesota over their remarks to the media related
0:37
Speaker 2: to the administration's immigration enforcement surge. Attorney General Todd Blanch
0:42
Speaker 2: said the judges flagrantly violated the judicial code of conduct
0:47
Speaker 2: by speaking to the New York Times.
0:49
Speaker 1: The comments are not only overtly political. itself a violation,
0:54
Speaker 1: but also concern matters pending before these judges or still
0:58
Speaker 1: in the appellate process a separate violation.
1:04
Speaker 3: Aside from the fact, on top of.
1:07
Speaker 1: The comments themselves, the comments are not even true and
1:11
Speaker 1: blatantly false.
1:13
Speaker 2: At issue is a September article in which seven federal
1:16
Speaker 2: judges in Minnesota, nominated by Democratic and Republican presidents, spoke
1:22
Speaker 2: on the record about their experience dealing with a flood
1:25
Speaker 2: of cases during last winter's immigration crackdown that led to
1:30
Speaker 2: thousands of arrests. The judge at the center of the story,
1:34
Speaker 2: Patrick Schlitz, a George W. Bush appointee, had described a
1:38
Speaker 2: grave threat to the rule of law in the government's
1:41
Speaker 2: handling of immigration detention challenges during Operation Metro's surge in Minnesota.
1:48
Speaker 2: In a statement, Schlitz said he was, quote, acting well
1:51
Speaker 2: within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in
1:55
Speaker 2: speaking to the New York Times. Joining me is immigration
1:58
Speaker 2: attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight. He
2:02
Speaker 2: was the head of the Office of Immigration Litigation during
2:05
Speaker 2: the Obama administration. Leon, the Justice Department filed a judicial
2:10
Speaker 2: misconduct complaint. They're complaining that in a New York Times interview,
2:15
Speaker 2: the judges made critical comments about the Trump administration's immigration
2:20
Speaker 2: enforcement surge that were overtly political and concerned cases that
2:25
Speaker 2: were still ongoing or at the appellate level. Do you
2:28
Speaker 2: think the Justice Department has a point?
2:30
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, the
2:32
Speaker 4: statute says that anyone can complain of conduct that is, quote-unquote,
2:37
Speaker 4: prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business
2:41
Speaker 4: of the courts. And so from that standpoint, what the
2:45
Speaker 4: Department of Justice is saying is that these judges who
2:49
Speaker 4: either participated on the record or off the record with
2:52
Speaker 4: the New York Times on their story about the Minnesota
2:56
Speaker 4: Federal Operation Metro Surge and other operations related to ICE
3:01
Speaker 4: in Minnesota, that those judges were not talking about justice
3:06
Speaker 4: generally or the administration of the justice system or the
3:10
Speaker 4: legal system, but that they were actually talking about specific cases.
3:15
Speaker 4: They were talking about things that ICE was saying about
3:18
Speaker 4: whether they were criminal foreign nationals as opposed to foreign
3:23
Speaker 4: nationals who had just overstayed visas. And they were talking
3:27
Speaker 4: about contempt orders and lack of compliance with orders.
3:32
Speaker 3: And things of this nature.
3:33
Speaker 4: And so what the Department of Justice is trying to
3:36
Speaker 4: really achieve, even though it cannot really achieve it directly,
3:40
Speaker 4: because the only thing that these complaints can really do
3:44
Speaker 4: is to obtain some sort of censure or reprimand. Only
3:48
Speaker 4: Congress can impeach a federal judge. That would be the
3:51
Speaker 4: role of Congress to do that. But what they're trying
3:54
Speaker 4: to basically create is a scenario that to the extent
3:59
Speaker 4: that there are these orders that reprimand or censure these
4:04
Speaker 4: federal judges in Minnesota, that they would then indirectly, sort
4:08
Speaker 4: of a third degree pool cue shot here, would then
4:12
Speaker 4: have to recuse themselves from these cases. So even though
4:15
Speaker 4: they couldn't be ordered to be recused, the fact that
4:18
Speaker 4: they would be under this scrutiny or this dark cloud
4:21
Speaker 4: would lead them to have to recuse themselves. And then
4:24
Speaker 4: these cases in Minnesota would then be given to judges
4:29
Speaker 4: that are more favorable than the ones currently handling them.
4:32
Speaker 2: I mean, are there still cases in Minnesota that are
4:35
Speaker 2: at the federal district court level?
4:38
Speaker 4: Well, there are some habeas cases in individual foreign nationals
4:43
Speaker 4: who are trying to either get out of detention or
4:47
Speaker 4: trying to stop their removal proceedings. But also the point
4:51
Speaker 4: is to the extent that there are additional surges that
4:55
Speaker 4: they would want to take place in Minneapolis.
4:57
Speaker 3: Remember, this is a very.
4:59
Speaker 4: Big hotbed with the Somali community and with allegations of
5:03
Speaker 4: fraud and the members of Congress from Minnesota and all
5:07
Speaker 4: of this. So the Trump administration really has Minnesota in
5:12
Speaker 4: under very large degrees of scrutiny. And so to the
5:16
Speaker 4: extent that they would like to, after this election perhaps,
5:19
Speaker 4: go back there and really continue severe immigration operations, they
5:25
Speaker 4: would want to do that in an environment where any
5:28
Speaker 4: new lawsuits that would be filed couldn't go to some
5:31
Speaker 4: of these federal judges who they were able to get
5:34
Speaker 4: some sort of reprimand or censure about their conduct.
5:39
Speaker 2: Well, do you think they'd be able to get that?
5:42
Speaker 4: Well, that's going to be a question because they'd have
5:44
Speaker 4: to move for recusal. And then the judges would then
5:48
Speaker 4: decide whether they could be impartial or not. And to
5:51
Speaker 4: the extent that the judges said that they could be impartial,
5:54
Speaker 4: the only move then is to appeal that determination. And
5:57
Speaker 4: then we'd have to see what the Eighth Circuit would
5:59
Speaker 4: do in any of those individual recusal cases.
6:03
Speaker 2: So is it the Eighth Circuit that will decide whether
6:05
Speaker 2: or not this complaint has any merit?
6:08
Speaker 4: The chief judge of the Eighth Circuit is going to
6:11
Speaker 4: be the one in charge of looking at whether there
6:13
Speaker 4: was misconduct here. which is a different issue from the
6:16
Speaker 4: recusal issue. But what they're trying to do is, to
6:19
Speaker 4: the extent that they can establish some misconduct that would
6:22
Speaker 4: lead to a censor or a reprimand, that would then
6:25
Speaker 4: give them the factual basis to do a recusal motion
6:28
Speaker 4: later in a subsequent future case.
6:31
Speaker 2: Do you think that the Eighth Circuit judge would really
6:34
Speaker 2: find that they were guilty of misconduct?
6:37
Speaker 4: So there have been two such cases so far already,
6:40
Speaker 4: one against Judge Boasberg and another against Judge Reyes. And
6:44
Speaker 4: both of those district court cases are 0 for 2.
6:47
Speaker 4: The Chief Judge Sutton of the Sixth Circuit struck the
6:51
Speaker 4: one against Judge Boasberg. And Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of
6:55
Speaker 4: the D.C. Circuit struck the one against Judge Reyes.
6:58
Speaker 3: And so at the moment, they haven't won any of
7:01
Speaker 3: these yet.
7:01
Speaker 4: But I think from their perspective, hope springs eternal that
7:05
Speaker 4: they would be able to to get one, and I
7:09
Speaker 4: just think from their perspective, perhaps the one where there
7:14
Speaker 4: was basically significant cooperation with the New York Times describing
7:20
Speaker 4: the people being arrested not being dangerous criminals, and perhaps
7:24
Speaker 4: if they can get some of these anonymous judges exposed,
7:27
Speaker 4: some of those might be more interesting than even anything
7:31
Speaker 4: that either Judge Boasberger or Judge Reyes did.
7:34
Speaker 2: Let's turn to the Supreme Court. More than 25,000 people
7:38
Speaker 2: have been expelled from the U.S. under this Trump administration
7:42
Speaker 2: program that deports migrants and asylum seekers to third countries
7:47
Speaker 2: where they have no ties. And the Supreme Court is
7:51
Speaker 2: now allowing the Trump administration to resume deporting to third
7:56
Speaker 2: countries migrants And a federal judge had ordered that people
8:00
Speaker 2: who are being deported get notice and a meaningful chance
8:05
Speaker 2: to argue that they would be at risk of persecution
8:08
Speaker 2: or torture.
8:10
Speaker 4: Well, what happened is and this has happened in a
8:12
Speaker 4: couple of other cases in the last three to four
8:15
Speaker 4: years is the Supreme Court. appear sometimes to what they
8:20
Speaker 4: would do is ready, shoot, aim. Instead of, you know, ready, aim, fire,
8:24
Speaker 4: they sort of do ready, fire, aim. And so this
8:27
Speaker 4: has happened a couple of times. One of the more
8:30
Speaker 4: recent ones that I thought was quite interesting was when
8:34
Speaker 4: during the Biden administration, they basically let a judge in
8:37
Speaker 4: Texas run ice for six months during the beginning of
8:41
Speaker 4: the Biden administration because that judge was saying that he
8:44
Speaker 4: didn't like the prosecutorial discretion memo. And then once the
8:48
Speaker 4: case finally got into argument, then the court said, oh,
8:51
Speaker 4: wait a second, does this mean that there's a judge
8:54
Speaker 4: who can say which immigrants should be deported and who shouldn't?
8:57
Speaker 4: and they're literally running ice. And when they figured that out,
9:00
Speaker 4: they were horrified and reversed their own decision. And I
9:04
Speaker 4: think this is where they're going to get to here.
9:07
Speaker 4: But for some reason, they don't seem to like the
9:11
Speaker 4: courts taking action so quickly and stopping the federal government.
9:15
Speaker 4: They like letting these things percolate. And so they're going
9:19
Speaker 4: to let the federal government deport people for the next
9:22
Speaker 4: few months to one of 30 countries. There's 30 countries
9:26
Speaker 4: who have signed on to allow the U.S. to deport
9:29
Speaker 4: foreign nationals to any one of these 30 countries that
9:33
Speaker 4: have signed on, that it's not their country of citizenship.
9:36
Speaker 4: It's a different country. And what that solves is it
9:39
Speaker 4: solves the problem of either a foreign national has been
9:42
Speaker 4: given protection so that they can't be deported to their
9:46
Speaker 4: specific country of nationality, but they don't face any problem
9:50
Speaker 4: in some other country of nationality. Or sometimes what happens
9:55
Speaker 4: is that there are countries that don't take people back.
9:57
Speaker 4: They refuse to admit. people back to their home country.
10:01
Speaker 4: And so this creates an option to deport those kind
10:05
Speaker 4: of foreign nationals that can't be sent back to their
10:08
Speaker 4: home country because their home country simply won't accept them.
10:11
Speaker 4: And the Supreme Court, once they do grapple with this,
10:15
Speaker 4: the question they're going to have to grapple with, hey,
10:18
Speaker 4: can you just do that? Can you just suddenly put
10:21
Speaker 4: someone who has a protection order, say, from China or something,
10:26
Speaker 4: and they say you can't send them to China, and
10:29
Speaker 4: then suddenly now you're sending them to Botswana, which is
10:33
Speaker 4: one of the countries who's recently decided to cooperate. And
10:37
Speaker 4: you had less than 24 hours notice. The person didn't
10:40
Speaker 4: have a chance to find the lawyer, didn't have a
10:43
Speaker 4: chance to investigate what their conditions would be in Botswana,
10:47
Speaker 4: how they would be treated, would they.
10:49
Speaker 3: Starve to death, that kind of thing.
10:52
Speaker 4: And I think the courts will eventually, much like in
10:56
Speaker 4: those cases where people were being sent home under the
11:00
Speaker 4: Alien Enemies Act without due process, will eventually say, well,
11:04
Speaker 4: wait a second, we have to have some due process here.
11:07
Speaker 3: But it's just going to take a while.
11:08
Speaker 4: And so for the next few months, there's not going
11:11
Speaker 4: to be any definition of what is due process here.
11:14
Speaker 4: when the government gets to suddenly just announce all of
11:18
Speaker 4: a sudden, hey, you're being sent to Burundi and there's
11:21
Speaker 4: just nothing you can do about it.
11:23
Speaker 2: The three liberal justices dissented, but they didn't write an opinion,
11:29
Speaker 2: perhaps because they've already issued scathing dissents when the court's
11:33
Speaker 2: conservative majority backed the administration twice during earlier stages of
11:39
Speaker 2: the litigation. Leon, the court is going to hear arguments
11:43
Speaker 2: on this in December. Do you think this temporary order
11:48
Speaker 2: indicates the way the court will go when they rule
11:51
Speaker 2: after oral arguments and briefing?
11:54
Speaker 4: I think that kind of thing used to be the case,
11:57
Speaker 4: but there have been several examples where the court has
12:01
Speaker 4: issued these emergency stays allowing something to go into effect,
12:06
Speaker 4: and then later, once they realize what they allowed to
12:09
Speaker 4: go into effect, They say, holy, holy man, this is
12:13
Speaker 4: not the thing we should have allowed to go into effect.
12:17
Speaker 4: We need to fix this. And I think this is
12:19
Speaker 4: going to be this type of case. I think in
12:21
Speaker 4: the end, you're going to see Justice Roberts, perhaps Justice
12:24
Speaker 4: Coney Barrett. And I think that would get you to
12:27
Speaker 4: five who would say, you got to do something more
12:32
Speaker 4: than what you're doing because people need to be able
12:34
Speaker 4: to build a record, get an attorney in and be
12:37
Speaker 4: able to say, hey, this is the first time I'm
12:39
Speaker 4: learning of Burundi. I'm going to have to explain whether
12:42
Speaker 4: this place is actually a place that I'm not going
12:45
Speaker 4: to die if I get sent to that location.
12:47
Speaker 2: And I read about violence on this deportation flight where
12:52
Speaker 2: federal agents ordered this group of immigrants to board, and
12:56
Speaker 2: they didn't know where they were going, and some of
12:58
Speaker 2: the men refused, and the federal agents said, hit them
13:03
Speaker 2: with pepper balls, eventually restrained them, carried them onto the plane.
13:07
Speaker 2: They were going to the Central African Republic. It's not pretty.
13:12
Speaker 3: Well, correct.
13:13
Speaker 4: Those flights can actually be very, very dangerous when people
13:17
Speaker 4: are resisting their deportation. And sometimes it's been known that
13:21
Speaker 4: tranquilizers and that kind of thing have to be used
13:24
Speaker 4: in order to get people on flights.
13:26
Speaker 3: And that issue also.
13:28
Speaker 4: Gets litigated as well, whether the government was correct To
13:31
Speaker 4: give people those tranquilizers, etc.
13:33
Speaker 3: And I think another issue you're going to start.
13:36
Speaker 4: Seeing getting litigated is this issue of what's called state
13:39
Speaker 4: created danger, which is that even if. the country is
13:45
Speaker 4: not going to persecute you if the government's going to
13:48
Speaker 4: send you to a dangerous location. So just as an example,
13:52
Speaker 4: if the government said, we're going to deport you to Norway,
13:56
Speaker 4: so that's a perfectly lovely country and great. If you
14:00
Speaker 4: get deported to Norway, there's nothing wrong. But the way
14:02
Speaker 4: we will effectuate your deportation to Norway is when the
14:06
Speaker 4: flight is 50,000 feet above Oslo, we will just throw
14:10
Speaker 4: you off the plane. That is a state-created danger. You're
14:13
Speaker 4: likely to die when that happens. And so you can
14:16
Speaker 4: ask for an injunction from that. And so the question is,
14:19
Speaker 4: is if you're going to be sent to Central African
14:21
Speaker 4: Republic or Burundi or somewhere else, that that might lead
14:24
Speaker 4: to your death because you have no way to eat
14:27
Speaker 4: or make a living or anything else. Then the question is,
14:30
Speaker 4: could a state-created danger claim be one that is advanced
14:35
Speaker 4: in such a context in order to prevent such a removal?
14:37
Speaker 3: So I think you're going to see that.
14:39
Speaker 4: And this is just a lot of litigation that hasn't
14:41
Speaker 4: been allowed to get to any court to consider these questions.
14:46
Speaker 4: But these are all questions that are going to have
14:48
Speaker 4: to be considered.
14:49
Speaker 2: Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue
14:52
Speaker 2: this conversation with Leon Fresco. The Supreme Court allows Trump
14:57
Speaker 2: to expand a federal database to help verify voter eligibility
15:02
Speaker 2: for the midterms. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg.
15:07
Speaker 2: I've been talking to immigration attorney Leon Fresco of Honda Knight. Leon,
15:11
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court reinstated Trump's expansion of the federal database.
15:16
Speaker 2: It puts on hold judges finding that the government was
15:19
Speaker 2: misusing Social Security information and violating privacy rights. How much
15:24
Speaker 2: do you think this will affect the midterms, having states
15:28
Speaker 2: and counties be able to access this data, which now
15:32
Speaker 2: contains Social Security Administration data?
15:36
Speaker 4: I don't know how many people will actually be stricken
15:40
Speaker 4: from the voter rolls who shouldn't be on there but
15:43
Speaker 4: are currently on there because of a mistake in terms
15:47
Speaker 4: of an automatic voter registration, one of these motor voter laws, etc.,
15:52
Speaker 4: I don't think it's going to be significant. The chances
15:56
Speaker 4: that it would be dispositive in any particular race are
15:59
Speaker 4: always so very low. But symbolically, this is a very high, high,
16:06
Speaker 4: high priority for.
16:07
Speaker 3: The Trump administration.
16:09
Speaker 4: And normally, when it's not a state versus federal issue,
16:14
Speaker 4: because when it's a state versus federal issue, then the
16:16
Speaker 4: Supreme Court pretty clearly usually defers to the states on
16:21
Speaker 4: election issues. But when it's a federal election issue, the
16:25
Speaker 4: Supreme Court has been pretty consistent about ruling in favor
16:28
Speaker 4: of the Trump administration on purely federal election issues. And
16:33
Speaker 4: so this was another purely federal election issue. And here
16:37
Speaker 4: the court said that the statutes basically requires the federal
16:42
Speaker 4: officials to comply and provide this access to the same database.
16:47
Speaker 2: Now, we've talked before about the Trump administration stepping up
16:51
Speaker 2: efforts to actually revoke citizenship. Tom Holman has confirmed that
16:56
Speaker 2: there is a criminal investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar. Omar
17:02
Speaker 2: says that she was granted automatic citizenship because she was
17:07
Speaker 2: 17 when her father was naturalized.
17:09
Speaker 3: Right.
17:10
Speaker 4: What happens is when you are too young, you're not
17:14
Speaker 4: allowed to apply for citizenship for yourself. So you get
17:18
Speaker 4: what's called a derivative citizenship that's gotten by virtue of
17:23
Speaker 4: your parent naturalizing. When you are a minor, automatically confers
17:31
Speaker 4: that citizenship on to you, although you do have to
17:33
Speaker 4: get a certificate of citizenship at some point to confirm that,
17:37
Speaker 4: which I'm sure she did. But there's multiple questions. So
17:41
Speaker 4: the one that's always been the salacious one in the
17:43
Speaker 4: news is did she marry her brother and was that
17:46
Speaker 4: for some immigration purpose or any of that? And it
17:49
Speaker 4: seems like in all of that, the marrying of the brother,
17:52
Speaker 4: you have statutes of limitations that have expired many, many
17:56
Speaker 4: years ago. And it's not clear that that was done
17:59
Speaker 4: for an immigration purpose related to her. If anything, it
18:03
Speaker 4: would have been done related to the brother. But in
18:06
Speaker 4: any case, we don't even know that. That's one separate issue.
18:09
Speaker 4: But there are other issues that they're looking at about
18:12
Speaker 4: whether the father was truthful in his refugee application in
18:16
Speaker 4: the first place. And the father is not alive anymore.
18:19
Speaker 4: But if the father was not truthful, then that application
18:22
Speaker 4: can be reopened and sort of the whole initial application
18:27
Speaker 4: can be reengineered and say that everything was based on
18:31
Speaker 4: a derivative fraud. Or there's this issue about whether Ilhan
18:34
Speaker 4: Omar really is the age he claims he is. such
18:38
Speaker 4: that she didn't need to apply for citizenship on her own.
18:43
Speaker 4: If that happened, that wouldn't lead to her deportation, but
18:46
Speaker 4: it would lead to her lack of citizenship, which would
18:49
Speaker 4: mean she couldn't serve in Congress and she'd have to re-naturalize.
18:53
Speaker 4: So all of this is very confusing. And if the
18:57
Speaker 4: government's going to lay out a case here, it's going
18:59
Speaker 4: to have to be a very, very clear set of
19:03
Speaker 4: facts that is going to be defensible because She's going
19:06
Speaker 4: to go to any court and say all of this
19:08
Speaker 4: was politically motivated and none of this is based on
19:11
Speaker 4: any actual significant misrepresentations. And so this is why you're
19:16
Speaker 4: seeing this take so, so long is the government's really
19:19
Speaker 4: going to have to figure out what it can actually
19:21
Speaker 4: prove in a very specific and concrete way.
19:25
Speaker 2: If this is being done for political purposes, is that
19:27
Speaker 2: a defense to the immigration claims?
19:30
Speaker 4: Well, she can go to a court and say that
19:34
Speaker 4: she is a subject of a selective prosecution or some
19:39
Speaker 4: sort of malicious prosecution that the federal government is doing
19:44
Speaker 4: to her and cite all of the stuff where people
19:47
Speaker 4: are talking in the middle of the investigations. and a
19:50
Speaker 4: court can decide under its discretion to dismiss if there's
19:54
Speaker 4: a denaturalization complaint it could decide to dismiss that denaturalization
19:59
Speaker 4: complaint on the basis of that misconduct and from that
20:04
Speaker 4: standpoint then that would be the end because if it
20:06
Speaker 4: dismissed that with prejudice then that would be the end
20:08
Speaker 4: of the denaturalization complaint.
20:11
Speaker 2: Let's turn now to ICE intending to hire 5,000 new
20:15
Speaker 2: agents to help deport more migrants. First of all, what
20:19
Speaker 2: are their deportation numbers, Leon, at this point? Are they
20:23
Speaker 2: meeting their quota?
20:24
Speaker 4: Well, everything is in the eye of the beholder because...
20:28
Speaker 4: From the perspective of people saying that they needed to deport,
20:32
Speaker 4: meaning forcibly remove people, not people leaving on their own accord,
20:37
Speaker 4: but forcibly removing people who are trying to stay here,
20:42
Speaker 4: they are way short because they were supposed to have,
20:45
Speaker 4: theoretically speaking, at least a million deportations per year.
20:50
Speaker 3: And they're not there.
20:51
Speaker 4: They're in around the 500,000 range in this most recent year.
20:56
Speaker 3: In terms of deportations.
20:57
Speaker 4: Now, they're saying there's been a lot, a lot of
20:59
Speaker 4: people who have self-deported, and I've certainly seen that in
21:03
Speaker 4: my practice, that there are people leaving, and they're very nervous,
21:06
Speaker 4: and they're saying, I'd rather leave than wait to get deported.
21:10
Speaker 4: But I don't know if it's the billion or two
21:12
Speaker 4: million that they're saying are self-deporting. It's unclear how many
21:16
Speaker 4: people are actually self-deporting, but in terms of the physical
21:20
Speaker 4: deportations of actually taking people people out who want to
21:24
Speaker 4: stay and you're doing it against their will those numbers
21:28
Speaker 4: are far short of the million that they want for
21:31
Speaker 4: a specific year so that's why they're trying to add
21:34
Speaker 4: these 5,000 extra ICE agents to have more detentions more
21:39
Speaker 4: ICE prosecutors more people working in the jails it's a
21:42
Speaker 4: whole infrastructure that you need you need more ICE agents
21:45
Speaker 4: to do the apprehensions more ICE agents to do the
21:48
Speaker 4: investigations more ICE agents to work in the detention facilities
21:52
Speaker 4: more ICE attorneys to work in the immigration courts. But
21:55
Speaker 4: then you also need more immigration courts. You need more
21:59
Speaker 4: immigration judges. You need the appellate structure. You need all
22:04
Speaker 4: of this. And then once you have all of that,
22:06
Speaker 4: then you can ramp that up. And so that's what
22:09
Speaker 4: they're trying to do is they continue trying to build
22:11
Speaker 4: this overall larger infrastructure to try to get the deportations
22:16
Speaker 4: for this next fiscal year to try to reach that
22:19
Speaker 4: million mark.
22:20
Speaker 2: The danger is, and we see that ICE agents continue
22:24
Speaker 2: to be involved in controversial incidents, and there was the
22:27
Speaker 2: shooting of the Venezuelan DoorDash driver by a recent ICE recruit.
22:32
Speaker 2: I mean, are they being trained properly?
22:35
Speaker 4: Well, this is the concern, is when you're trying to
22:39
Speaker 4: ramp up and hire thousands of agents, there is a
22:41
Speaker 4: precedent for this, which was when the Border Patrol, you know,
22:45
Speaker 4: at the time of 9-11, probably had 2,000, 3,000 agents there.
22:49
Speaker 4: and now has 20,000, 25,000, something like that, agents in
22:54
Speaker 4: the Border Patrol. And that was done in a very
22:57
Speaker 4: quick ramp up over just one or two years. Then
23:00
Speaker 4: it got slowly more and more, but there was a
23:02
Speaker 4: very large ramp up. And during that time period, you
23:05
Speaker 4: saw many corruption arrests, many arrests for misconduct. Then there
23:10
Speaker 4: was an attempt to put polygraphs so that people had
23:13
Speaker 4: to take polygraphs in order to become a Border Patrol agent.
23:16
Speaker 4: Then many people failed the polygraph, so they had to
23:18
Speaker 4: remove the polygraphs. Then they brought it back later. And
23:21
Speaker 4: so you're seeing all of the same thing being recreated
23:24
Speaker 4: with ICE agents, which is it's very, very hard to
23:27
Speaker 4: find people with clean records who are conscientious, who are
23:32
Speaker 4: hard workers, who can be trained properly. It's not impossible,
23:36
Speaker 4: but it's much harder than just ramping it up and
23:38
Speaker 4: hiring 5,000 people like that.
23:43
Speaker 2: At least 27 people have died while in ICE custody
23:46
Speaker 2: this year. The causes vary from presumed suicides to cardiac
23:51
Speaker 2: arrest or pneumonia, and the ages of the detainees ranged
23:55
Speaker 2: from 19 to 85. The rise in detainee deaths comes
24:00
Speaker 2: as the agency's detention space has been stretched to capacity,
24:05
Speaker 2: with more than 60,000 people in immigration detention at any
24:09
Speaker 2: given time, amid President Trump's campaign of immigration arrests and deportation.
24:16
Speaker 2: The trend is poised to continue as the administration carries
24:20
Speaker 2: out its enforcement agenda with overcrowded facilities, limited resources, and
24:26
Speaker 2: less oversight after gutting watchdog offices last year. The National
24:31
Speaker 2: Immigration Project reports that the death toll for ICE detainees
24:35
Speaker 2: in 2026 is on pace to match or exceed The
24:40
Speaker 2: high number seen in 2025, which saw over 30 reported fatalities.
24:46
Speaker 2: Joining me is immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at
24:50
Speaker 2: Holland & Knight. Leon, the growing number of deaths in
24:54
Speaker 2: ICE custody, is it because the Trump administration did away
24:58
Speaker 2: with the watchdog? offices that used to oversee the facilities?
25:04
Speaker 4: I think the deaths in ICE custody have a number
25:06
Speaker 4: of factors. One, we have a lot more people detained,
25:10
Speaker 4: first of all, than we previously had. And that does
25:14
Speaker 4: matter because the more people you detain, we're peaking at
25:17
Speaker 4: about 73,000 people in detention. We used to have 40,000, 30,000.
25:21
Speaker 4: So you're doubling the amount of people in detention. But
25:27
Speaker 4: then the The other thing that you have is you
25:29
Speaker 4: still have a higher rate of death per person than
25:33
Speaker 4: you used to have. So it's not just that there's
25:35
Speaker 4: more people in detention, because then the question is, well,
25:37
Speaker 4: what about the proportion of the rate per 100,000 people?
25:43
Speaker 4: And so that has increased. That number has gone up.
25:46
Speaker 4: And the question is, well, why has that number gone up?
25:49
Speaker 4: I understand why the gross number has gone up, but
25:52
Speaker 4: why has this sort of proportional number gone up? And
25:56
Speaker 4: The reason there is not just the number of people,
26:01
Speaker 4: but when you're having new kinds of detention facilities that
26:07
Speaker 4: were not the traditional structures that were designed to be
26:12
Speaker 4: permanent structures with medical facilities and doctors that had worked
26:17
Speaker 4: in those facilities for many years and things of this nature,
26:21
Speaker 4: but now you're building new facilities that that are much
26:24
Speaker 4: more temporary, like the Alligator Alcatraz or camps or soft-sided facilities.
26:31
Speaker 4: You have to not just build those facilities. You have
26:33
Speaker 4: to find doctors who are willing to work there and
26:36
Speaker 4: nurses who are willing to work there. And I mean,
26:39
Speaker 4: if you just look in America, period, how hard is
26:41
Speaker 4: it to find a doctor to treat you for anything?
26:45
Speaker 4: And now you're trying to find a doctor to staff
26:47
Speaker 4: some ICE facility in the middle of some rural area
26:51
Speaker 4: that has a population of 100 people, where are you
26:54
Speaker 4: going to find the medical people who are qualified to
26:58
Speaker 4: work in those facilities? And so that's really, I think,
27:01
Speaker 4: at the heart of this is you're just not going
27:04
Speaker 4: to get quality health care in a lot of these
27:08
Speaker 4: pop-up ICE facilities, let's.
27:10
Speaker 3: Call them, in the middle of rural areas.
27:12
Speaker 4: It's just impossible to think that you're going to find
27:15
Speaker 4: the kind of medical providers that will provide the kind
27:19
Speaker 4: of quality care that would avoid deaths in certain circumstances here.
27:23
Speaker 2: I take it there are lawsuits about this. I don't
27:25
Speaker 2: know if anything will really be done.
27:28
Speaker 4: Well, I think the problem with the lawsuits is you
27:30
Speaker 4: can only file them on an individual basis about someone
27:33
Speaker 4: who individually obtained substandard medical care. But that's no consolation
27:39
Speaker 4: if you've died. So from that standpoint, I don't know
27:42
Speaker 4: what can be done systemically. Because it's sort of hard
27:46
Speaker 4: to say systemically, here's the problem. You're going to have
27:49
Speaker 4: to show a problem in a specific facility and say,
27:53
Speaker 4: in this specific facility that's a pop-up ICE immigration facility
27:57
Speaker 4: in this rural location where there are no people, how
28:01
Speaker 4: did we find the doctor? How did we find the nurse?
28:03
Speaker 4: What is the treatment here? What is the ability to
28:06
Speaker 4: urgently intervene? And I just think in a lot of
28:09
Speaker 4: these locations, it's going to be hard to prove, but
28:12
Speaker 4: I am highly confident that if you ask what's the
28:16
Speaker 4: reason for the increased deaths, this.
28:19
Speaker 3: Is the reason.
28:20
Speaker 2: I want to turn to the use of money from
28:23
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security to pay for a series
28:27
Speaker 2: of television ads featuring President Trump ahead of the midterm elections.
28:34
Speaker 4: Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America.
28:38
Speaker 3: America will never be a communist country.
28:44
Speaker 2: The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration used
28:48
Speaker 2: federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to finance
28:53
Speaker 2: those ads. And Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Chris Murphy...
28:58
Speaker 2: say that it appeared that DHS had dedicated $ 20 million
29:02
Speaker 2: to those ads. Has this ever happened before, using DHS
29:07
Speaker 2: funds for ads like this?
29:12
Speaker 4: Well, it's not supposed to be used for that purpose.
29:14
Speaker 4: When you have money that's supposed to be appropriated for
29:18
Speaker 4: a specific purpose, then the way it works is that
29:21
Speaker 4: the Congress can actually say to the administration, you're You're
29:27
Speaker 4: misusing that money. You're using it not for a purpose
29:30
Speaker 4: that we designated for. And at that point, you can
29:34
Speaker 4: actually prosecute people under what's called the Anti-Deficiency Act.
29:39
Speaker 3: The problem is.
29:40
Speaker 4: is, how do you prosecute someone under the Anti-Deficiency Act
29:45
Speaker 4: when the DOJ is the prosecutor? And so it's very
29:50
Speaker 4: hard to think that the DOJ is going to prosecute
29:53
Speaker 4: the Trump administration under the Anti-Deficiency Act. And then the
29:57
Speaker 4: question is, would the courts appoint a prosecutor or something,
30:01
Speaker 4: or can the Congress have some authority to do that?
30:04
Speaker 4: All of these things would have to be worked out,
30:07
Speaker 4: or would there be something that's done in the appropriations
30:10
Speaker 4: process to shut down the government or any of that?
30:13
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, the appropriation law
30:17
Speaker 4: bars the funds from being used for this publicity or
30:22
Speaker 4: propaganda that was not authorized by Congress. But again, the
30:26
Speaker 4: question is, What are the remedies? Because the remedies appear
30:30
Speaker 4: like they're only going to end up being political. It's
30:32
Speaker 4: not going to really be anything that a court can
30:35
Speaker 4: actually solve because, again, who's going to start that prosecution there?
30:40
Speaker 2: So now starting today, October 1st, hundreds of thousands of
30:45
Speaker 2: immigrants who have legal status are at risk of losing
30:50
Speaker 2: their Medicaid coverage and Is this something that was known
30:54
Speaker 2: because it's the big, beautiful bill?
30:56
Speaker 3: Well, right.
30:56
Speaker 4: What happened was in order to pay for the tax
30:59
Speaker 4: cuts that were part of that big Reconciliation Act in 2025,
31:05
Speaker 4: the idea was there needed to be government savings. And
31:08
Speaker 4: so there were all kinds of cuts, both for U.S.
31:11
Speaker 4: citizens and for foreign nationals. But one of the cuts
31:14
Speaker 4: for foreign nationals was a bunch of foreign nationals such
31:19
Speaker 4: as people who came on the refugee program or people
31:22
Speaker 4: who had received political asylum or people who were paroled
31:26
Speaker 4: into the country or who had something called withholding of removal,
31:30
Speaker 4: which is that they couldn't be deported back to their
31:32
Speaker 4: home country or people in the domestic violence green card process.
31:36
Speaker 3: But all of these.
31:37
Speaker 4: People qualified for Medicaid if they didn't have a certain
31:41
Speaker 4: amount of income. So just like anyone under the Obamacare
31:45
Speaker 4: bill that had passed during the President Obama administration, they
31:49
Speaker 4: had had a Medicaid expansion. And so a lot of
31:52
Speaker 4: poor people were suddenly eligible for Medicaid that used to
31:56
Speaker 4: not be eligible. And so this covered this group of people.
32:00
Speaker 4: But what the big, beautiful bill did is it said, no,
32:04
Speaker 4: if you're not a citizen or a green card holder,
32:07
Speaker 4: even though you have other of these quasi-legal statuses, you're
32:11
Speaker 4: not going to be able to get health care in
32:13
Speaker 4: the form of Medicaid. And so, yes, it's over 281,000
32:18
Speaker 4: people in nine states. And then it's also 177,000 in
32:24
Speaker 4: Florida and 29,000 in North Carolina, 28,000 in Arizona, 148,000
32:30
Speaker 4: in California. So lots of people are losing their health care.
32:35
Speaker 4: And the question is, well, this might save money in
32:38
Speaker 4: one way, but if all these folks now have to
32:40
Speaker 4: go to the emergency room for every single thing that
32:42
Speaker 4: ails them, then that's going to be more expensive and
32:45
Speaker 4: make it worse. The idea was to get all those
32:47
Speaker 4: folks out of the emergency room and into like an
32:50
Speaker 4: urgent care facility or a community health center or something
32:53
Speaker 4: like that.
32:54
Speaker 3: And now when they lose their Medicaid, they don't have that.
32:57
Speaker 2: Leon, let's talk about something that will affect us all,
33:01
Speaker 2: at least all taxpayers. The Trump administration is planning to
33:05
Speaker 2: require U.S. taxpayers to disclose their citizenship and work authorization
33:11
Speaker 2: status to the IRS as part of a proposed change
33:15
Speaker 2: to the annual tax form that nearly all workers file
33:20
Speaker 2: each year. A draft of the Form 1040 released by
33:24
Speaker 2: the IRS this month asks filers to check yes or
33:28
Speaker 2: no to this question. At the time you file your return,
33:32
Speaker 2: are you and your spouse, if filing jointly, a U.S. citizen, U.S. national,
33:38
Speaker 2: or an alien lawfully authorized to work in the U.S.?
33:42
Speaker 2: Do you see any problem with that?
33:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, the question is not what the question is. So
33:48
Speaker 4: you put citizen yes, non-citizen no. The question is what
33:52
Speaker 4: are you doing with that information? Because the rule has
33:54
Speaker 4: always been We ask you for tax information. You file
33:58
Speaker 4: your taxes. We don't use that against you in immigration
34:02
Speaker 4: deportation proceedings. To the extent that the Trump administration wants
34:06
Speaker 4: to ask this question to give ICE more data to
34:09
Speaker 4: start deporting people, this has always been something the IRS
34:12
Speaker 4: has traditionally pushed back on. There will be lawsuits about that.
34:17
Speaker 4: And the question is, will that actually survive?
34:20
Speaker 2: Leon, we covered so many topics. Another tour de force.
34:23
Speaker 2: Thanks so much. That's Leon Fresco of Holland & Knight.
34:28
Speaker 2: And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember,
34:31
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34:33
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34:37
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34:47
Speaker 2: Wall Street time. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg.