Matt Iglesias
speaker
87 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Matt Iglesias’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I mean, it's what's actually happening is closer to the latter. Right. I mean, in terms of the question of like, what is the quantity of people who are deported? The historic peak for the United States came during Barack Obama's term.
And the main reason for that, at least as I understand it, is that there was really strong cooperation between ICE and state and local law enforcement officials there. And basically, they were picking people up out of jails all throughout the country, which is a very efficient process.
If you're thinking of deportation as a resource-intensive kind of operation, people who are already in custody are the easiest people to deport. And then numbers started to come down because of policy changes in blue states, then different enforcement priorities, things like that.
But what Trump at least would like, what real immigration hawks would like to see happen is create harsh day-to-day living conditions for people who are in the country without authorization. Very optimistically, they hope people will self-deport. Beyond that, they just think it's a deterrent.
Like, people come to the United States without visas because they believe that life as an illegal immigrant in the United States of America will be better there. than their life back at home.
So if you can make it worse in any number of different ways, including by just raising uncertainty that a person kind of working off the books and minding their own business might get deported, that has a kind of an impact. Like yesterday, I think Tom Honan was on TV and he was like, we arrested 308 people already, which was like, I think the average under Biden was about 310 ice arrests per day.
So there's a certain amount of like we're getting tough theater that is occurring and that will occur. But we don't really know what's going to happen. Right. I mean, we haven't ever seen one. really tough interior enforcement in the United States, both because of the logistics, but also because the politics are tough the more concrete you get. Right now, there's big immigration backlash.
And so, like, should we deport everyone? Polls like pretty well. You, you know, go into a restaurant that you like and ICE has like deported the guys washing the dishes and now the restaurant's closed and one of them is married and he's got kids who are American citizens and there's like a sad story in the newspaper.
That's where you get into more difficult things and it's why Trump always talks about criminals. Right. Because he's always talking about criminals, criminals, criminals, criminals, which is like, I think, an easy sell. Right. Somebody who, in addition to immigrating illegally, has committed non-immigration crimes. But the impetus behind these orders is to try to say nobody is safe. Right.
Like everybody better watch their back.
I think, yes, clearly, like the politics have shifted in blue America, I think particularly around removals of people who've been arrested and that to the extent that Donald Trump wants to work with people and get back to an Obama-type policy agenda there. Like, I think he could get it done through a mix of political fear and sincere change of heart on the part of Democratic officials.
Like, and Riley Act deals with a basically related set of considerations. I mean, the thing Republicans would put in an ad against you if you voted no on it is that this bill requires ICE to detain people, you know, who've been convicted of theft and some other list of crimes. Arrested for. Arrested, yes. So the objections to it relate to sort of due process.
I mean, people can be arrested for things they have not committed. But also it creates a lot of state causes of action where you can sue the federal government for having not done X, Y, or Z. It was pretty clearly written.
When Joe Biden was president, like to get Democrats to vote no, right, by saying like this is unworkable, it's going to hamstring the executive and then Republicans could run against it. Democrats started saying, well, we'll vote to advance this, but like we're going to we're going to like fix that stuff in the amendment process.
Then because Republicans really like they wanted to get to know on that bill, so they wouldn't do any of the amendments. And then Democrats refused to take the no vote that Republicans wanted them to take. So now this like probably unworkable bill has passed. E-Verify and employer sanctions are a different kettle of fish because when Republicans were putting together, I think they called it H.R.1.
It was like this big immigration package. H.R.2? H.R.2, yes, when Biden was president. And initially, mandatory e-verify was in that package because the point of the package was to be maximally hawkish. Again, they wanted to get to know with Biden so they could complain. But, like, that's a, you know, a sticky point for Republicans, and it raises the question, again,
of where does Trump want to go with this ultimately in terms of workplace raids, other things that are bothersome to the business community versus just kind of picking fights with progressive mayors and governors about local law enforcement cooperation.
I think that part of it, you saw this back during the they're eating the dogs, eating the cats controversy, which is that the sort of MAGA movement has tried to redefine people with things like temporary protected status or people with asylum applications, you know, in the process as illegal immigrants.
when in a legal sense, it is not illegal to arrive without a visa and then benefit from a grant of TPS, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think Vice President Vance, who's more cogent than President Trump, has explained that in his view, this is like a loophole. This is like lawyer BS. And so I think part of the intention of this expansive order is just to sweep all those people in.
The fact that it also applies to people with totally normal, uncontroversial visas, like Trump was out saying that he loves the H-1B visa program, that he employs lots of people with H-1B visas. He clearly doesn't. And I think he's referring to a different H-2B. But, you know, there's never been a question that, like, you are allowed to come to the United States on a J-1 visa.
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