How Trump's Immigration Crackdown is Playing Out in the Bay Area
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From Kikuti in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. The Trump administration has targeted Southern California for the harshest components of its crackdown on Latino immigrants. For the past few weeks, federal agents have raided restaurant kitchens and Home Depot parking lots, sparking anger and protests all over the country. Though we haven't seen the same level of intensity here in the Bay, ICE has arrested immigrants who show up for immigration court hearings.

We'll talk about what's happening in our region and what we can expect in the months ahead. Are the LA tactics coming north? That's all coming up next, right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. The Bay Area has long been a place where immigrants build lives. In Santa Clara County, for example, more than 40% of residents were born in another country. Add in their children and grandchildren, and the fact is that so many of us have ties to immigrants.

The path to the United States is rarely simple or straight. People have come here in a variety of ways. Families sometimes have mixed documentation status, meaning some members have legal papers and others do not. Some people have made unauthorized border crossings. Some people came as a result of American wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Still others came as asylum seekers from across the world.

Under the second Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE of course, has changed its tactics, arresting longtime residents, raiding restaurants, and snatching people off the street for deportation in unmarked cars with masks on and law enforcement badges hidden. And we'll hear so far, as we'll hear, most of these actions have been concentrated in Southern California. But it's not clear what would prevent these ICE tactics from migrating northward eventually.

Joining us to talk about the current situation, we've got Taiki Hendrix, senior editor covering immigration. We've got Jean Guerrero, journalist and contributing writer with New York Times Opinion, the author of Hatemonger, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda, as well as Crux, a cross-border moment. Welcome, Jean. Great to be here.

And we've got Katherine Seitz, legal director with the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area. Welcome. Katherine, I'd like to start with you, if we could, in part because we're going to talk mostly about enforcement later. But we have the Supreme Court on Monday allowing the Trump administration, at least for now,

to move forward deporting immigrants to countries that are not where they came from. Can you talk to us a little bit about what this particular ruling means and how you interpret it in kind of the scheme of U.S. immigration law? Sure. What it means is that people who are granted something called withholding of removal or convention against torture relief

Normally, they're given protection from removal to their home country. And in theory, in the past, they could have been removed to a third country if they had ties there or were a dual citizen or something like that. But...

Traditionally, that was protection because in order to get withholding or CAT, you have to show that it's more likely than not that you're going to be persecuted in your home country. And the reason that people would go for withholding or CAT instead of asylum can be related to criminal convictions, but it also can be just they missed the one-year deadline for applying for asylum. And so they have this higher burden of proof.

And it doesn't lead them to a green card or permanent protection in the U.S. But traditionally, it was very protective. It was a great thing to win. And now it feels like a loss when you get there because you don't feel safe or your client doesn't feel safe. And I mean, I guess I just don't understand the idea of deporting people to third countries. Like, why would we do that? Yeah.

I think the idea is it's a deterrent from people pursuing their cases. I think that it's just to scare everybody from coming here or from staying here or from showing up to court. Because if you don't show up to court, you get an in absentia order and then you can be picked up and removed at any time. I mean, do we have a history of doing this or is this unprecedented? No, this is unprecedented. This is just...

You know, even from Trump 1.0, the first Trump administration, this is unprecedented. I mean, do other countries do this? I don't know if other countries do it, but certainly, I mean, I guess England was trying to do it, trying to make their... That's kind of the one example I had in my mind, that they cut a third-party deal, but then there were protests and pushback, and they didn't actually really end up doing it. Right, right. Yeah.

Gene Guerrero, let's bring you in here. You know, over the last couple of weeks, there have really been countless news reports out of Southern California about ICE raids, different enforcement actions, obviously big protests that went on. What have you been watching and reporting on?

Yeah, so ICE has been terrorizing the diverse communities of Los Angeles, focusing on largely Latino neighborhoods. And as you guys mentioned before in the show, they are showing up outside of Home Depots, outside of car washes, schools, snatching people off of the street, outside of the front of their homes, in front of their children, and often doing so illegally.

warrants. The other thing that we are seeing, which I think is worth noting, is that people of all races and backgrounds are putting their bodies on the line to protect their friends and their neighbors and family members from ICE. This is happening not just in L.A., but of course in the Bay and across the country. People are risking arrest and risking their safety, not just

to resist ICE, but to document what is happening. So we're seeing videos of the arrests, which is of mothers who are being taken from their families, of pregnant women being handcuffed in the streets, some of them who are here legally, some of them who are citizens.

And I just think it's worth highlighting this resistance that is happening because each act of

documentation is chipping away at this alternate reality that the Trump administration has created in which they claim that they are targeting serious criminals. And there are surveys that show that most Americans still believe that the Trump administration is prioritizing serious criminals. And these

This witnessing that we're seeing in Los Angeles of what is actually happening and the valued community members who are being targeted is destabilizing that narrative, that false narrative that the administration is putting out there.

You know, Taiki, you know, Donald Trump promised, ran on deporting millions of people. And of course, previous administrations have also deported millions of, also deported lots of people, but he promised to deport more. Has he done so yet or has it been more the nature of these raids and these enforcement tactics?

He ran on deporting millions of people and specifically, you know, as Jean mentioned, focusing on criminals, the worst of the worst. And what we're seeing right now, I think there's a process, you know, the deportations come a little further down the line, but we are seeing more.

I would say record numbers of people in ICE detention now, 56,000 currently in facilities. They have funding for like 41,000 detention beds. But most recent data from the last week or so shows that

Almost three quarters of those people in ICE detention have no criminal history whatsoever. And so, you know, are they arresting some people with criminal records? Sure. Are they arresting a lot more people who don't have any kind of criminal background? Yes. Is that because they just want to juice the numbers of people who are being detained?

Yeah, I mean, arguably so. We've seen reporting that Stephen Miller, who is, as Gene well knows, having written the book about him, is Trump's primary immigration advisor, that he has gone to ICE and other federal enforcement folks and said, look, we need 3,000 arrests a day to get to these numbers of millions of arrests. And that is far beyond what...

what other governments have done. The last year, the Biden administration, I think it was like 750 arrests a day, which is not insignificant. And, you know, they've at least doubled that at this point. You know, Catherine, as someone working on the legal side of this, I was hoping you could explain a little bit more about the immigration court experience, because at least my understanding is it's quite different from the kinds of court you might go to, you know, when you're doing jury duty. Mm hmm.

Yes, immigration court is a sort of, it's not a court in the sense of that it's under the judicial branch. It's actually under the Department of Justice. So it's under the administration. So it ends up being

more of a political football sometimes. But immigration judges have a certain amount of independence. But when you go in front of an immigration judge, there's no jury. You can have a defense attorney. You can have an immigration attorney representing you, but there's no right to a free immigration attorney. So you either have to pay them. No public defender. Yeah, there's no public defender. You have to pay them or you have to find a nonprofit with capacity, and that's hard to find.

And then, yeah, there's no jury. There's a prosecutor. The government attorney is there and the judge is there. And...

That's how but that's how you can fight your case and seek asylum. So are there I also understand that there are different types of I guess one is an ICE check in one's an immigration court appearance. Like some of these things are related to these kind of complex immigration processes. Can you talk about a few of the ways that an immigrant might encounter this system?

Yeah, so what happens, sort of a typical person might have come in at the southern border, either been paroled in under the last administration or tried to enter without inspection and got caught. And then they're, in the past, they would be released from detention so that they can find an attorney and apply for asylum. But in order to make sure that they're really going to show up to court,

ICE will give them these annual, usually they're annual check-ins. So you come once a year and you check in and that shows us that you're going to show up to court. And then maybe in the meantime, they have these special phones where you check in weekly by doing, taking a selfie on this phone that can track your location. So that's the ICE check-in part. And the point of that is to make sure that you're really engaged and paying attention and planning to, demonstrating that you're planning to show up to court.

And then going to court is where you usually have an initial calendaring hearing, and you might have more than one of those if you haven't found an attorney yet. And that's where you're going in to say, I want to seek asylum. Give me a date to come back and explain my case fully. And that's called an individual hearing.

And what we're seeing now is generally people were free during this whole time. They were free to, because once you apply for asylum, six months later you can get a work permit. So it helped people work and save money to pay an attorney. And then now what we're seeing is either at ICE check-ins or at immigration court, people are getting detained. We're going to talk some more about that when we come back from the break. Of course, we're talking about immigration.

about the Trump administration's immigration enforcement actions. Joined by Catherine Seitz, legal director at Immigration Institute of the Bay Area. Jean Guerrero, who is a journalist and contributing writer with New York Times Opinion, also the author of "Hatemonger," "Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda." And we've got our own Taiki Hendrix, senior editor covering immigration with us as well. I'd love to hear from you. Are you concerned about the crackdowns in the area? Are you doing anything differently because of these crackdowns as a business owner or worker?

Give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. Forum at kqed.org. We'll be back with more right after this. Support for Forum comes from the University of San Francisco School of Management. Celebrating 100 years of partnership with the Bay Area business community, the USF School of Management connects students to the city's vibrant culture, hands-on internships, and a wealth of career opportunities.

where AI and sustainability are integrated into every facet of business education, and where students bring innovation, ethics, and entrepreneurial leadership to a planet in need. The University of San Francisco School of Management. Change the world from here. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment.

They wield the power of the law to protect people's health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, and advance clean energy to combat climate change. Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer. Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org.

Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about immigration enforcement and this second Trump administration, what it means for our region. I'm joined by Teggy Hendrix, senior editor covering immigration with KQED, Jean Guerrero, a journalist and contributing writer at The New York Times Opinion, Catherine Seitz, legal director with the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area. Of course, we're going to invite you into this conversation as well. Are you doing anything differently?

in your life as a result of the ICE crackdowns. The number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can email [email protected]. Of course, we're on social media everywhere. We're KQED Forum. I wanted to take you, I want to just get a little better sense of like what's happening to people after they are detained. Like where do they go? What are their options?

Yeah, interesting. I mean, so people are typically, you know, put in an ICE detention facility. And in California, we have six or seven of those that they are all private prisons operated by for-profit companies. And interestingly, I mean, as you know, you were talking earlier, we've seen a lot more of the kind of workplace raids and, you know, sort of

broad sweeps in Home Depot parking lots in Southern California, a lot less of that in Northern California where these ICE arrests have been more targeted at ICE check-ins, at immigration court hearings, which is kind of unprecedented to have ICE officers in the hallways of the courts arresting people. But talking to some advocates, you know, they were pointing out they think that there are fewer

arrests in Northern California because we don't have any ICE detention facilities in Northern California currently. And that's partly because advocates waged campaigns over the years and, you know, the places where people had been held in ICE custody most recently were at the Yuba County Jail, Contra Costa's West County Jail facility.

And those contracts were ended. And so, you know, ICE is on record saying they want more lockups in Northern California. They're looking at my reporting found they're looking actually at Travis Air Force Base as a place to to pop up an ICE detention facility. John Garamendi, the congressman whose district that is, who actually sits on the House Armed Services Committee, was arrested.

shocked to hear that and was very much opposed to it because he felt, you know, Travis is needed. The space there is needed for doing the work of the Air Force. Um,

But yeah, people go into these privately run detention centers around California or they're flown to Arizona or Texas or Louisiana, places where there are more and bigger, or Georgia, big ICE facilities. You know, Teki, wasn't I seeing though that there were protests out in Dublin around a pretty notorious former women's federal prison out there and that was shut down, right? Yes.

people are protesting because there's a prospect that that might be turned into a nice detention center? That's another one that is potentially on the radar. My sources were saying, you know, there is some

going on there. Currently, it's no longer a federal women's prison because, as you say, of the abuses that were taking place there, it got shut down. But, you know, advocates who are watching this are saying that they're seeing some activity there and whether it's just routine maintenance or whether they're retrofitting for something else is, you know, it's not clear.

clear to us yet. And Congressman Mark DeSaulnier has been watching that one. In case people want to learn a little bit more about that Dublin women's prison, we did a show on it one time. I actually got a call from the inside during that show. People can check that out. Let's bring in another guest here. Let's bring in Tilman Jacobs, who's an immigration rights supervising attorney with the Asian Law Caucus. Welcome. Oh, okay. Tilman's going to join us a little bit later.

So let's go to Jonathan in Berkeley. Welcome, Jonathan. Good morning, Alexis, and good morning to all of your guests. I'm interested in how your guests might respond to

a Trumplican who would define the term criminal other than rapists and murderers and stuff like that, how they might respond to the suggestion that the term criminal in Stephen Miller's definition might

It means someone who simply has crossed the border without documentation is illegal and therefore a criminal and should be arrested. What would be an open-minded response to that question?

Jonathan, appreciate that question. Jean Guerrero, as someone who wrote a book about the way Stephen Miller defines things, among other things, can you talk to us a little bit about that question? Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, I just want to say that being in the country without authorization is difficult.

considered a crime. It is a civil infraction. So a majority of the people who are being picked up because they are undocumented, it is a civil offense that they are being picked up for. But in terms of Stephen Miller's focus, he has never been focused on illegal immigration. He has said that his main issue is with legal immigration.

which is why from day one during the first Trump administration, they focused on closing legal pathways that have brought generations of immigrants, especially non-white immigrants, into the United States. For example, slashing refugee admissions, strangling the asylum system, choking off green card access. And now during this administration, attacking or attempting to attack birthright citizenship,

diverting resources from serious human trafficking and homeland security investigations to pick up as many people as possible, oftentimes being the low-hanging fruit workers who

who have not committed what anyone would consider a crime. It is true that the administration and Stephen Miller want people to see all immigrants as criminals simply for having entered the country illegally, but

Like I said, being in the country without authorization is a civil infraction. But people would still say you broke the law, right? Even if it's a civil infraction. Right. I mean, I think it depends on the person, but yes. And I think, however, like what we are seeing is that when people see who the administration is targeting, you know,

pregnant women. There was a pregnant woman in Hawthorne here, close to where I live in LA County, that created a lot of backlash. And you're now seeing conservative Americans kind of speaking out against some of these arrests and saying, you know, this is not what we signed up for. Like, we thought that the administration was going to be

you know, spending these resources on targeting what we thought were predators, you know, murderers, rapists. These are the stories that Stephen Miller repeatedly highlighted, you know,

you know, in Trump's speeches, in his own social media. They created an office called Victims of Immigration Crime Enforcement, which is dedicated to lifting up stories of Americans who have been killed by immigrants, which creates the false impression that immigrants are more likely to commit violent crimes.

than U.S. citizens when in fact the research shows the opposite. So this really is about creating the false impression that immigrants who are here without authorization, regardless of whether you want to see that as a crime or something like rolling through a stop sign at a traffic, to create the impression that they are a threat to national security because that is how Stephen Miller sees them.

because of his ideology, which sees the browning of America as an existential threat. And what you're saying too about Stephen Miller there, I mean, it's based on what he has said and written and these things, right? Like that's the evidence base. Yeah. As I report in my book, Hatemonger, you know, when he was in college at Duke University, he teamed up with the white supremacist, Richard Spencer to bring Peter Brimlow in

And Brimlow is a leading activist in the white nationalist and anti-immigrant movements who wrote a book called Alien Nation, which argues for a white United States. Miller also promoted the white supremacist genre spies book, The Camp of the Saints, which depicts the end of the white world by brown refugees who are described as monsters and beasts.

And this is an antagonism that Stephen Miller has felt for the changing demographics of the United States since he was

In high school, you know, I report in the book that he frequently, when he was a teenager, he would antagonize his Latino classmates, telling them to speak English or to go back to their countries. He would go to school board meetings to complain about multiculturalism. And so when you look at the trajectory of Stephen Miller's life and career, it's clear that his

laser focus on limiting legal immigration and targeting not only people who are here illegally but even legal immigrants it's about erasing the multicultural fabric of places like Los Angeles where he grew up and enforcing what amounts to a white nationalist vision of the United States Let's bring in Miguel in Mountain View Welcome

Hi, this is Miguel. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can, Miguel. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. I'm a Latino activist here in the community. My real job is in high tech, but I also manage a local WhatsApp group in Mountain View. And people are really, really scared, even though we have a very pro-immigrant city where the government is really supportive of us and also very low enforcement activity in our area.

The psychological warfare that this administration is playing is really taking a toll. I volunteer for the Rapid Response Network, and the amount of reports that we get of all kinds of random cars that people see on the street, most of which end up being false reports, is just tremendous. People are very scared about just going about their daily lives. And

It is such a shame that it's working. You know, what they're trying to do in terms of getting people scared is absolutely, absolutely working. Yeah. Hey, Miguel, I appreciate that on the ground perspective. Taki, is that the sort of thing that you're hearing from people to the people you're talking to, both advocates and immigrants? Yes, I think I think that fear is very real. I spoke to an undocumented woman the other day who said,

I mean, there's a fear and there's also just like...

Like, I just have to go on living my life. She said she saw ICE agents with ICE on their uniforms, you know, going into an apartment building in San Pablo. And she had been waiting at the bus stop. And she said, you know what? I think I'm going to take a Lyft home today. I'm not going to stick around here. So, yeah. So there is there's fear. There's figuring out how do we how do we move in a new environment where otherwise we

law-abiding people are, you know, immigrants are feeling that kind of anxiety. But as Miguel is, I guess, an example of the kind of, you know, community response that exists too. And these rapid response networks have been training up hundreds of volunteers. There was a

I don't know, a week and a half ago, maybe it was, in San Francisco, there was a kind of a sudden call for weekend ICE check-ins, which was very unusual at a private contractor facility south of Market. And the advocates got out there and had like a moving picket and like the place couldn't even open up. So there is that kind of response. And I think it's also worth mentioning

Mentioning that, you know, both some local governments, Alameda County, San Jose and others in the Bay Area, and also our state government have been putting, you know, resources from their budgets into legal aid for immigrants who are, you know, displaced.

fighting deportation or, you know, trying to regularize their status. And that's something that California has done for a couple of decades now. There was, you remember the special session back December, January, and they authorized not

Not only $25 million for lawsuits to fight the Trump administration on a variety of policy issues, but also another additional $25 million for legal aid for probably groups like Catherine's. I don't know if she gets some of that money for her work, but yeah. Let's bring in Tillman Jacobs now with the Asian Law Caucus. Welcome, Tillman.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. You know, one thing I've been wondering about, I mean, we know that there are undocumented people from all over the world in the United States, you know, Europeans and people from Africa, from Asia. And yet almost all the enforcement actions that I have heard about have been targeting Latino people and communities. Is that because that's what's getting reported or that's what's showing up in my particular social media? Or are Asian immigrants also experiencing these kinds of raids?

Absolutely. And these raids and these enforcement efforts are affecting all communities. It's true that they are going in so many directions that it is difficult to cover everything. And these enforcement actions in public spaces like Home Depot and

other areas where... Restaurants, exactly where I suspect that undocumented people are, tend to be much more public and performative. And so they are...

in some ways easier to cover, but they're also just so dramatic and on people's minds that they become aware of them. But people from all sorts of communities are affected. So at Asian Law Caucus, for example, we're seeing that Southeast Asian communities are very much affected by these enforcement efforts targeting people

who have old deportation orders that were unenforceable for a long time. So what do you mean? Like, how old are we talking? Like a year old or like 30 years old? Oh, decades, sometimes decades. So for many countries in Southeast Asia, like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, it was impossible to actually return people there because they,

Like other countries that the listeners might have heard of, like Venezuela or Cuba, because of diplomatic relations with those countries, the countries would not accept people that the United States believed were nationals of those countries. And so many of the depredation orders we see are from 20, sometimes even more, years ago. Mm-hmm.

And can people fight that just on the sort of like on the bare facts of it? Or is it still like the deportation order is in effect? And so there that's it. Yeah. So this is something that we do a lot as we consult with people about their ability to reopen their cases.

Because the deportation orders can come from a variety of reasons. Oftentimes, a lot of our clients do have

a conviction that led to the deportation order, but it could also be that they just didn't want to fight their case and they knew that they would not be deported. And I have seen this a lot where the idea of perhaps staying detained and fighting your case or just accepting the deportation order knowing that you wouldn't return

became a calculation that people accepted. And so, yeah, so we tried to reopen these cases, say, well, things have changed, maybe the law has changed, this conviction should not actually make someone removable, or the country conditions have changed, so now it would actually be dangerous to send them back to those countries.

We're talking about the Trump administration's immigration enforcement actions and how it's changing things on the ground. Joined by Tillman Jacobs, an immigrant rights supervising attorney with the Asian Law Caucus. Catherine Seitz, legal director of the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area. Gene Guerrero, a journalist and author of the book Hate Monger. And Taiki Hendrick, senior editor covering immigration here at KQED. We'll be back with more right after the break.

Support for Forum comes from the University of San Francisco School of Management. Celebrating 100 years of partnership with the Bay Area business community, the USF School of Management connects students to the city's vibrant culture, hands-on internships, and a wealth of career opportunities. Where AI and sustainability are integrated into every facet of business education.

and where students bring innovation, ethics, and entrepreneurial leadership to a planet in need.

The University of San Francisco School of Management. Change the world from here. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment. They wield the power of the law to protect people's health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, and advance clean energy to combat climate change. Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer.

Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org. Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the ICE enforcement actions that the Trump administration has carried out so far. Joined by Teki Hendrix, senior editor covering immigration with KQED, Gene Guerrero, a journalist and contributing writer with The New York Times Opinion, the author of Hatemonger, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. And we're going to talk about the Trump administration's

Catherine Seitz is also with us, legal director with the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, and Tilman Jacobs, immigrant rights supervising attorney with the Asian Law Caucus. Let's bring in Muktesh in Fremont. Welcome.

Hello. I wanted to make a comment about their motivations. And by they, I mean Republicans and Trump team specifically, right? Their motivations in doing things the way that they are doing, right? They're showing up and grabbing people who are legally trying to go through the process.

and grabbing mothers and daughters and doing it in this violent, horrific way is because they don't have a clear plan for reforming immigration through passing laws or legislation. And that kind of tracks with what has been happening, right? Since his first term, when he ran on, health care was one of the big things, right? He was going to kill Obamacare. Repeal and replace. Yeah.

Yes, a big, beautiful thing is going to happen with privatizing insurance, and then it's going to be big and beautiful, his words. And then, no, we have not seen any word of that, right? There's been no willingness or motivation or ability for them to pass any legislation or to actually, like, go through Congress and do it the right way. So this kind of tracks with that, right? This is just their way of...

doing something and declaring success without actually having to do the work like legislators unwilling or incapable of Legislating yeah, that's my comment the moktesh in Fremont. Thank you so much for that You know, I'm gonna actually stack this with Thomas who has in Hayward who has a Jason thought welcome Thomas. Oh

greetings alexis wow um that's exactly basically along the lines that i was heading at and thank you everybody good to greet you um november 6th 1986 is a few weeks ago i got on and brought up the same thing are you familiar with that date this would be uh i mean i know i know what it is but go ahead tell us about it and not not to be captain quizzo but um as

As I recall, I'm paraphrasing, that was a bipartisan law signed by Ronald Reagan with an effort to do exactly what our friend in Fremont was talking about, to legislate a

process to finally get to a point that we honor and enforce our immigration laws, but to deal with the people that are already here. As I recall, the figure was 1.7 million people were granted. I don't recall what it was, but

Amnesty. Right. Yeah. It was amnesty, basically. That why, you know, big, beautiful, you know, stop all the politics. Just Congress, do your job. And that's really where I'd like to get input because everybody, we're human beings and it's atrocious what's going on. Yeah. Tom, I really appreciate this. Let me take this to Taiki because, of course, you know, the Immigration Reform and Control Act was bipartisan legislation. We actually didn't

If you're interested, we've done whole shows on it as well. And, you know, I think it's seen in many Latino communities as a remarkable thing. It put a lot of families on the pathway to, you know, full documentation. And at the same time, like here we are decades later. And of course, the core issues were never really solved in particular.

you know, the economic system in the United States continues to incentivize immigration of many different kinds. Takei, talk to us a little bit about, you know, is that a good model and how different are the politics now than they were in 1986 under Reagan? Well,

I know. Big question, but take it where you will. Indeed, quite different. Sure. I mean, IRCA, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, as you say, I think allowed, it was more like 3 million people, I think, who were undocumented to get on a path to a green card, and many of them ultimately became citizens. And that was...

you know, sort of dealing with folks who were here undocumented. There were also, it was where we started having to fill out I-9 forms to declare that we had legal work authorization. And it became, in fact, a crime to hire people who didn't have work authorization. But in fact, there were a lot of little loopholes and

And employers have been able to have a little deniability there. One thing it did not do and that subsequent bills have tried to do over the couple decades I've been following this issue

is to reform the pathways for legal migration, for people to come for jobs, to come to reunite with family members, you know, maybe to expand those avenues for legal migration and work.

and kind of adjust to the world that we live in today because it's been, you know, since 1965 that those laws have been in place. And, you know, there were big, what they called comprehensive immigration reform bills in the aughts and then around 2013. And they didn't, they had bipartisan backing and they didn't make it far enough. And I think that Congress,

I mean, before we even got to this totally polarized place that we're in now, you know, there certainly was some thinking that maybe we can't do it all in one big comprehensive bill. There are a couple things like legalizing DREAMers, people who came to the U.S. unlawfully as children.

who have been protected, many of them, not all of them, by DACA that was created a dozen years ago by Obama. But there's no permanent path to legal status. That has always been one of those times, like, if we can't even solve that one. Yeah, and there is bipartisan support for that. But it requires now with Republican majorities, Republicans to agree to bring that up for a vote. Another one is for agricultural workers where there's been some

bipartisan consensus that we need, you know, we need farm workers and that half of them, in fact, are undocumented. I think one thing that we are seeing Congress doing now is budgeting, which you can do with a simple majority. And the Republicans have a simple majority. And the House recently passed their big budget bill that includes

A lot, lot, lot, lot more money for immigration enforcement to the tune of, you know, $60 billion supplemental for Customs and Border Protection, which would include hiring 8,000 new officers. Another, I think it's $75 billion supplemental for

For ICE, which would involve hiring, you know, 10,000 new officers, expanding the detention beds up towards 100,000 detention beds. So like kind of doubling the size of things? Yeah, or yes. And so that now goes to the Senate, where, you know, the Republicans have a slim majority and

But that will, you know, if budgets are sort of blueprints for policy, you know, that is certainly spelling out a kind of an immigration policy that's just about enforcement and about criminalizing people, kicking them out. Let's bring in Donnie in Oakland. Welcome, Donnie.

Hi, good morning. My name is Johnny. I'm a caseworker working for refugees and immigrants in a barium. I would like to take this opportunity to request the immigration lawyers and law students who can help because we are meeting with people who came through the southern border

Just before these immigrations take the government, their work permit, they have what you call parolee status, and their work permits are not being issued like before. So they are unable to get a work permit, and they cannot work. And we are really, really difficult to find a job.

affordable or free lawyer for the defensive asylum cases to go to the court in San Francisco. I reached out to all the immigration law organizations around. Nobody was able to pick it up, these cases. So is there anybody or anyone listening

immigration lawyers please please help us work with the nonprofit law organizations the Asian Law Caucus, API Legal Outreach, East Bay Century please contact them and volunteer because we need your help thank you. Appreciate that plea for representation I mean tell me Jacobs Immigrant Rights Supervising Attorney with the Asian Law Caucus are you getting volunteers or how's that working?

Well, we are actually trying to expand our recruitment of volunteers and pro bono attorneys. So that is definitely something that we and a lot of the legal aid organizations around the Bay Area are thinking a lot about. So we...

have a whole network where we're collaborating together. And one thing to do for attorneys who now want to volunteer but just don't know where to go is looking at some of the portals, like the sfildc.org has a portal where you can sign up and enter your information.

And that will send attorneys, connect them to all sorts of organizations, not just one particular one. Yeah. And Catherine, how about you? What would you say about it? Yeah, we definitely use volunteers, both pro bono attorneys and community volunteers. And in our...

Alameda County, as someone was saying before, the counties and the states fund us. Alameda County just gave us funding specifically to try and meet the need of all these asylum seekers who need to get their asylum application filed and need to get their work permit started. So we're going to start a pro se or pro

where we can do higher numbers of people. We're not necessarily taking them on for full representation, but we're at least helping them get their asylum application on file so that six months later they can get a work permit. Let's...

Let's turn to a few comments here. We've got Aaron over on the Discord writes, "I live in the Adams Point neighborhood near Lake Merritt in Oakland. The other day I noticed a vehicle marked Department of Homeland Security and Federal Protective Services. This is included with observations of other vehicles marked private security. What is the Federal Protective Services and do they have involvement with ICE? Also, what role does private security play in deporting immigrants?"

I mean, I think I'll take this one to you first, but Jean Guerrero, if you've got something to chip in, feel free. Yeah, I was almost going to ask Catherine to jump on it. Yeah, sure. Catherine, do you want to talk about this first? Yeah, what we're hearing about is that ICE is – it's normally sort of just ICE doing these enforcement activities, but that under this administration, we're hearing that they're pulling in sort of volunteers from –

other branches. Like we've heard that USCIS officers can volunteer to go help ICE. And we're hearing that there was an activity that seemed to be enforcement related where they were doing, quote, welfare checks on unaccompanied minors. And they were using HSI agents. And HSI is usually sort of the

the investigative branch of ICE that helps stop human trafficking. And they were being used actually for these visits that, that were ominously enforcement related. I do want to jump in with one thought, Alexis, that one thing that we are not seeing in California that, uh,

that is going on much more widely in other states and other parts of the country is the cooperation of local law enforcement. Police and sheriffs can be sort of deputized under a provision of immigration law, 287G agreements, they're called, where ICE can sort of make local cops into officers

to immigration enforcers. And California has sanctuary laws on the books that say we're not gonna use our state and local resources to help with immigration enforcement with certain exceptions related to the prisons and people who have serious criminal convictions. But we're not, I mean, this is expanding rapidly in other states and it's not happening in California.

Let's get to a couple of last calls here. Sorry, real quick. Claudia. Go ahead. I just wanted to add that there's this sense of unease in Los Angeles and I think other cities related to the fact that a lot of times ICE officers are...

You know, wearing plain clothes, they're refusing to identify themselves and forcibly detaining people off the streets. So it's unclear to a lot of people how to distinguish between real ICE and, you know, ICE impersonators, which we've already seen in other parts of the country, ICE impersonators being arrested for kidnapping people. And so it's actually creating a real conflict

of public safety because if armed individuals in plain clothes refuse to identify themselves and forcibly detain people on the street, how are people supposed to know who they are and let alone stop them if it's a criminal and they fear being charged with obstruction? So I just wanted to note that that fear is there and it's creating a sense of uncertainty

you know, public on safety. Totally. Jean, appreciate that. Thank you. Claudia in El Sobrante. Welcome. Hi, good morning. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can. Go ahead.

Thank you. I just wanted to make some comments and calls for unity and for people to find their humanity because those of us that have lived their entire lives are very, very tired of this problem. I grew up with this issue. I became an activist pretty much most of my life. I was a DACA recipient. I do have my residency now. But it is...

It hits way, way too close to home when it just feels like it's what I've done my whole life. I was organizing marches back in 2006. There was a huge movement for immigration reform. Eventually, I figured out that, you know,

marching and sitting weren't going to do much other than get us on the news. And I started getting involved very much on actual policy change and getting people to register to vote and making phone calls. I volunteered for both of the Obama administrations. Organizing for America was the grassroots organizations that I was making. I mean, I spent pretty much...

two decades of my life doing that and it's got really busy but I just I don't see that happening that much more and I understand the fear for it it's very clear that you know this administration is not about solving problems our economy has a lot of issues and of course it's also a financial incentive to some people who are unemployed and otherwise otherwise unemployable

to get these jobs. And it's just, it's just a terrible, I just, I have a lot of hope that people will, um,

I feel like very much World War III will be about the spiritual war, and I don't want to get all Buddha on you, but just finding your humanity and being like, you know, it's about you and, like, what are you doing to help your neighbor? You know this, people. The vast majority, I was fine with all the Obama administration's deportations, even though he was Obama's chief, what do they call it, excuse.

I had a port of and she whatever it was I got a lot of backlash from my community because I was like listen if people are committing crimes if they're not here to seek a better life and they should not be you know but I gotta let you go where we got it we got a pop out of the show thank you so much for your perspective

We've been talking about the Trump administration's ICE enforcement actions. We've been joined by Taiki Hendrix, senior editor covering immigration at KQED, Jean Guerrero, a journalist and contributing writer with New York Times Opinion, author of the book Hate Monger, Catherine Seitz, legal director at the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, and Tilman Jacobs, immigrant rights supervising attorney with the Asian Law Caucus. Thank you to everyone who called in. Really appreciate your takes. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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