State Lawsuits Quickly Follow Trump’s Day One Immigration Orders
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From KQED.

From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Ever since he came down that escalator 10 years ago, Donald Trump's political compass has been oriented towards attacking immigration and immigrants. And on the first day of his second administration, he put out an astonishingly ahistorical executive action to end the longstanding practice of assigning U.S. citizenship to anyone born in our country.

Eighteen states, including California and two cities, including San Francisco, have already filed suit to block the action. Trump also declared an emergency to send troops to the southern border, among other things. We're going to talk about what's happening, how immigrant and mixed status communities are preparing and where this is headed. It's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.

The Bay Area is a region made up of immigrants. Close to a third of the Bay Area's people were born in another country.

Then there are the rest of us, children of immigrants, grandchildren, cousins, siblings. At the high end of the socioeconomic spectrum and at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum, from Central Asia and East Asia and Southeast Asia, from India and Pakistan, from Mexico and Central America, from East Africa and West Africa, from Ireland and Ukraine and Russia, this is a place where immigrants have thrived and struggled, but mostly thrived with and through the remarkably dynamic economy here.

When I look at the incoming administration's moves to change the basic tenets of immigration to this country, I can't help but see an attack on the fabric of our community.

There are important debates to have about the nature of undocumented immigration, about fixing the broken asylum system, about deportations under presidents from both parties, about a fairer, better process for refugees, about spreading the burdens on our communities more equitably, about the historical and current role of the U.S. economic system in fostering migration to this country. And I want to have them. But that's probably not what we'll end up talking about today.

Donald Trump is the president and his executive actions point our policies in a different, more punitive direction. Here to discuss, we're joined by Molly O'Toole, a fellow at the Wilson Center and New America, formerly reported on immigration for the L.A. Times. And she's got a book about global migration forthcoming. Welcome, Molly. Thanks for having me.

We're also joined by Deep Gulasekram, who is a professor of law and director of Byron White Center for the Study of Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he teaches constitutional and immigration law. Also, the co-author of the leading immigration law textbook used in U.S. law schools. Welcome, Deep. Thank you for having me.

Molly, before we dive into the executive orders that Trump issued on his first day in office, I wanted to focus on the themes that have emerged from them. Like, what are you seeing?

Well, it was also really interesting to see the difference in tone between the sort of pre-inauguration rally, the speech at the inauguration itself, the post-inauguration indoor parade, I think people called it, and then to see the tone of the executive orders. There were key differences, especially in those speeches. You know,

You know, to some extent, we're seeing a sort of redux recycling of some of the themes we saw from Trump's inauguration and early executive orders in 2017. This sort of very dark vision of the country, a country being, I'm using air quotes here, that you can't see, you know, overrun or invaded politically.

by a wave of migrants that represent health threats or security threats to our communities, especially lots of emphasis on this wave and this invasion coming to American communities beyond the border. So sort of these dark, dark themes that it's pretty consistent with that time.

At the same time, you know, talk about restoring an American greatness. This is a sort of golden era, I believe is the phrase used. Golden age. Yeah, right. Golden age. Excuse me. Thank you. Golden age. So it's a lot of this sort of dark picture with an occasional flash of, but I'm here to save you, but I'm going to fix all that, but I'm going to restore a certain kind of America. So that's sort of the thematic contrast. But the executive orders themselves, especially when the

the ones regarding the border or immigration, they absolutely present this sort of existential threat to an American way of life. Briefly, I also wanted you to talk a little bit about Trump's actual first term record on immigration. I mean, for example, you know, he said he'd hugely increased the number of Border Patrol agents. He said, you know, he'd, quote, build the wall. He talked about a lot of deportations. But like what happened?

Yeah, I mean, I think it is pretty remarkable, whether you agree with the Trump administration or not, it is pretty remarkable, this sort of amnesia about what he actually achieved relative to his promises. You know, they took quite a lot of executive action when it came to immigration and the border, and they issued, if people will remember, way back in 2017, you know, a slew of executive orders akin to these in the first days of

after Trump 1.0 came in. But many of the promises, especially associated with that campaign in 2016, build the wall, for example. I mean, the Trump administration also declared a national emergency then and shut down the federal government in order to take $15 billion from the Pentagon going toward build the wall.

you know, building the wall again, air quotes, um, when Trump couldn't get his own, the Republicans at the time controlled both chambers of Congress, couldn't get them to dedicate money towards the border, uh, infrastructure, um, in part because the parts of the border where there is no, uh,

quote unquote, wall are some of the most difficult, most expensive. The border patrol and DHS itself has said, you know, that it's inefficient to try and build there. In the end, only added, I think most people would think when he says build the wall, a sort of primary barrier, you know, this big, quote unquote, big, beautiful wall on the border. In the end,

really only added minimally to that first line. Yeah, like maybe 5% or something. Exactly. And still to this day, most of it was built actually under the Obama administration. So that's just one example. He said he would hire, you know, thousands of additional Border Patrol agents and ICE officers, but actually left office with some of the lowest levels. Border Patrol is congressionally minimally mandated to be at 20,000 and hasn't achieved that level of staffing yet.

since the Obama administration. So these are just some examples in which, you know, it's really important to look at actions versus campaign promises, as well as actions versus what is written in the executive orders. And if you were to look at deportations, too, on a chart, say, going back,

you know, 20 years, I think it would be impossible more or less to find the Trump administration like on that chart as a, as some sort of step change from what was happening before. Well, exactly. I mean, the Biden administration just achieved one of the highest levels of deportations that there has been. Obviously the Obama administration got a lot of flack.

was given the, you know, moniker Deporter-in-Chief for their deportations. And look, it's worth noting, deportation refers to a sort of formal process of removal. But the Biden administration kept in place the Trump administration's Title 42, which basically just ended asylum at the border, rapid, you know,

no due process expulsions of people back to Mexico. They use that more than the Trump administration for longer and more frequently and expelled 3 million people. So while there have been really high numbers of arrivals at the border, and there were over the Biden administration, they also expelled millions of people. And we don't necessarily count those expulsions.

in those deportation numbers because a sort of different process was used. But if we want to focus on removals and immigration enforcement, the Biden administration went further than the Trump administration did. Trump administration 1.0. Right. So, Deep, let's talk a little bit about at least the executive actions in this Trump 2.0 era today.

I mean, the one that really feels like a step change is this move to try and end birthright citizenship. Talk a little bit about what birthright citizenship is and its sort of historical basis. Right. So birthright citizenship is now codified in the first sentence, first clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

which reads that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. It was put into the Constitution in 1868 as an amendment. Its primary purpose at that time was to overrule

the Dred Scott versus Sanford decision from 1857. In that decision, the Supreme Court had said that Dred Scott, as a black man, could not be a citizen of the United States. In fact, it said whether enslaved or free, he could not have been a citizen of the United States.

Certainly, that was the primary purpose when the 14th Amendment and its Citizenship Clause was created. But even during the debates around that clause, it was recognized by the people putting it into the Constitution that it would mean that lots of people from all over the place, including at that time the very head, the

the Chinese who were the subject of much vitriol and hate at that time would become citizens when born in the United States. And that is how it has been understood since the time of its implementation in the Constitution and recognized by the Supreme Court for over 125 years.

And yet, we're one to just read the executive order. That is not the history that is told there. And it's around this clause subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Tell me about this, what seems to me on the reading of the evidence, quite fringe legal theory.

It is a fringe legal theory to be sure. The idea subject to the jurisdiction thereof at the time that the 14th Amendment was created and then even when the Supreme Court in 1898 in a case called Wong Kim Ark out of San Francisco said that that idea of subject to the jurisdiction thereof in the 14th Amendment, all it's meant to exclude

are the children of diplomats who think of diplomatic immunity. They are foreign. They're subject to foreign powers. They happen to be in the United States for diplomatic purposes. So their children are not automatically considered citizens of the United States. And at that time, also excluded were children born

in Native American, under Native American sovereignty, so on Indian tribes, which were considered a form of sovereigns, domestically dependent sovereigns within the United States. Now, Congress in 1924 changed that for the children born on Indian tribes. So now, for the last hundred years, even that group has also been

been given citizenship upon birth in the territory of the United States. But that at this moment, that's really what subject to the jurisdiction thereof means that the children born to diplomats in the United States are not automatically citizens of the United States. Everybody else is subject to the laws of the United States when they're born here. And that has been true, again, for over 125 years of the United States. Yeah.

We're talking about President Donald Trump's executive orders on immigration, including ending an attempt to end birthright citizenship, as well as declaring a national emergency on the southern border. We are joined by Deep Gulasekram, who is professor of law and director of the Byron White Center for the Study of Constitutional Law at the University.

University of Colorado Boulder Law School where he teaches constitutional and immigration law. Molly O'Toole is a fellow with the Wilson Center as well as New America, formerly reported on immigration for the LA Times and has a book on

global migration that is forthcoming. Of course, we also want to hear from you. I mean, what are your questions about Donald Trump's immigration orders, his record? Are you or your family directly impacted by these orders and how are you responding to the new administration? You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. Your comments and questions can go to [email protected].

on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, Discord, or KQED Forum. We'll be back with more right after the break. Hey, have you heard of On Air Fest? It's a premier festival for sound and storytelling taking place in Brooklyn from February 19th through 21st. I'm Morgan Sung, host of KQED's new tech and culture show, Close All Taps, and I'll be there at the fest to give a sneak preview of the show, along with an IRL deep dive all about how to sniff out AI.

You'll also hear from podcast icons like Radiolab's Jad Abumrad, Anna Sale from Death, Sex, and Money, and over 200 more storytellers. So come level up your own craft or connect with other audio creatives. Grab your tickets now at onairfest.com.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about Trump's executive orders on immigration with Deep Gulasekram, who's a professor of law at UC Boulder, as well as Molly O'Toole, who's a fellow at the Wilson Center in New America, longtime immigration reporter.

Deep, you know, we have a comment from one of our listeners, one that I, you know, is certainly in the air in conservative and anti-immigration circles. Alex writes, What about people who purposely abuse this system? There are mothers who come here on tourist visas with the sole purpose of bearing citizen children. I'm just hypothetically, parenthetically saying that.

Are there that many people who do that? "Conferring upon them benefits they can make use of years later, they have no intention of ever being a true part of this country. Then there are people illegally here who bear children and then claim or have claimed on their behalf that deporting their parents is separating families. Attempting to gain access via children they cannot gain as adults. Birthright citizenship without exception simply invites these abuses." A couple questions coming out of this comment.

One is, and Molly, this is sort of more of a factual thing. Do we know empirically how many people come here, quote unquote, on tourist visas merely to have children in this way?

No, we don't. We don't know empirically. There have been some estimates put out, you know, by various various groups about potentially the number of people in the United States who have one undocumented parent, for example, or people in the United States who have two undocumented parents, for example. And those estimates are

range, you know, from one to several million. But that doesn't indicate any kind of empirical statistical accounting of this theory, which I think is often trumped up for different motivations about people just coming to the United States in order to have children. The other part of this question I think is

is interesting is what do we do deep to discourage people from essentially having children purely, you know, to sort of, as people might say in some realms of the world, you know, to anchor themselves in the United States?

Yeah, I mean, I think that one might first ask whether the premise of the question has any evidentiary backing. You know, in many ways, this trotting out of this idea that people come here solely for the purpose of having children in the United States is a way of making sure that the solution that then you then propose

is apropos for the problem that you're now defining. But the fact is that this is not why people come to the United States. They run from cartel violence, failed states, extreme economic deprivation,

They may have children as people do when they have families. It's a part of the human condition, but there's no empirical backing for the idea that this is why people aren't coming to the United States. Many people who have children without lawful status in the United States have been here for decades and have grown up in the United States.

Two other things I'd say is if you note the actual executive order is not limited to people with an unlawfully present parent in the United States. It also includes, shockingly, parents who are in the United States lawfully, but on a temporary basis. And that could mean people who are here, for example, on H-1B visas, people here on student visas. So it's not just those who are unlawfully in the United States. And then the final thing I'd say is

If in fact people are very concerned about this idea that people are coming here solely for the purpose of having children, then it's worth them thinking about the idea of amending the Constitution and what it would take to amend the Constitution to come up with a different rule. But simply because you don't like the current constitutional rule doesn't mean that you can, through executive order, change that constitutional dictate.

Another interesting thing, Deep, is I was looking at some Cato Institute post that was about how birthright citizenship, in contrast to the way that it is done in some countries in Europe, seems to have aided assimilation in this country, which is one reason why it had been supported by people over time.

Let's turn a little bit to the one more legal question on this, Deep, which is just that, you know, we've seen that, you know, California, a bunch of other states and San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have already filed suit. What do we know about how the path that lawsuit is likely to take through the legal system?

Right. So there's already been two suits, one in the District of New Hampshire filed by the ACLU and some advocacy groups, and then 18 states or state attorney generals, including California's, including Colorado's, filing suit in the District of Massachusetts. And so the executive order on birthright citizenship is supposed to start taking effect

I think according to the order, it's not exactly clear, but it looks like February 19th, so about a month from now. And I presume that one of these courts might,

make a decision in that time. We'll see. They could enjoin the executive order, at least stay that order while they go through trying to decide and write an opinion on it. From there would be appealed. Both of those states actually and those district courts are in the first circuit, first federal circuit. And so from there, they expect appeal to the first circuit and then from there possibly to the United States Supreme Court. And I mean, I have seen

A variety of sources saying this looks like it's going to the Supreme Court. I think that's right. I think that there is there is one version of this where Donald Trump truly believes that through executive order, he can just simply write what he thinks the Constitution should mean. And in his view, the Constitution means only these people should have birthright citizenship.

But I think the more real politic way of thinking about this was this was clearly intended as a way of setting up a test case for the Supreme Court with the hope that a friendly Supreme Court would be willing to overturn what is now, as I mentioned, over 125 years of Supreme Court precedent and really much longer than that of the actual practice of law in the United States, which is always respected

birthright citizenship, of course, racially defined until the 14th Amendment and then open to any race, any background after the 14th Amendment. Yeah. You know, Molly, one interesting factual question that I've seen kind of been about is let's say a child is born in the United States to an undocumented family.

And birthright citizenship in the United States does not exist. Where would they be a citizen of or how would that work? Well, I mean, I think if you carry this exercise through, and of course, none of these details are included. And to be honest, I don't think that the administration has even contemplated these details because I think that they understand that even, and the professor can speak more to this and echoing all of his points, that

that even very conservative legal scholars have suggested that this is the most legally vulnerable of all the actions they've taken so far. They haven't...

thought these things through because I think that they, to some extent, expect and understand that this is going to be challenged. And when it is legally challenged, they will lose because it's not only constitutional, which obviously would be the highest consideration, but even before the 14th Amendment, Congress passed laws that afforded birthright citizenship. So, you know, I think they haven't answered these questions, but if you carry these things through, exactly, would that person be stateless?

if the potential country of origin for one or both of their parents wouldn't allow them to have citizenship or wouldn't consider them to be citizens themselves. And, you know, I think it's worth pointing to that the United States is not unique in having birthright citizenship. I mean, there are more than 30 countries around the world that have birthright citizenship. So we don't have the answers to those questions.

That would need to be answered if you were going to implement if they were able to sustain this in court and were able to implement implement this. But I think part of the reason those questions have not been answered is because they they sort of expect. I mean, I do think to some extent, this is also a repeat of the strategy in 2017, although obviously we didn't see them go so far as as this, although it's something that Trump has talked about over the years.

is that this is something of a distraction. I mean, it's, of course, quite important to focus on. This would be quite sweeping and sort of fundamentally change the very national narrative that we have about what it means to be an American. But this also, if they have the expectation and understanding that they will likely lose in court, which I believe that they do, then this is something of a distraction from some of the other

executive orders that go quite far on immigration and the border and may have a better chance of being sustained in court. Let's bring in a caller here. Let's bring in Justin in San Francisco. Hi there. Thanks to both you guys for covering this important issue. I'm an immigrant myself and

feel strongly actually opposing this position, but I wanted to, the position of the Trump administration, but I wanted to explore a little bit some of the preparatory remarks you guys had related to security concerns from an unsecured border. It seemed like your panelists dismissed those concerns, but maybe you could provide some context surrounding that, and I could offer that just the tenure of the position comes across a little bit as if there's a bias on the part of both the panelists and Mr. Magibal.

Thanks for that, Justin. I mean, Molly, why don't you go first on this one? Well, I don't actually think we touched much on security so far. So I'm a little surprised in that regard. And again, you know, try and remain focused on the facts. I think all we can do as journalists, especially our job is to hold the people accountable.

in the White House accountable regardless of which party they are and measure them against their campaign promises and measure their actions against the law. I think both the Biden administration and the Trump administration took steps to evade U.S. legal obligations. It is part of U.S. law

That whoever arrives at the border has the right to seek asylum, regardless of whether they cross at a port of entry or between it. And even the Trump administration's efforts to basically say, well, if you cross between the port of entry, then you don't have access to asylum, which is a right under U.S. law. They were blocked in that effort by the courts. So that's sort of my position there.

You know, I think it's, you have to look at what has been a really unprecedented shift in migration to the United States. And this is the focus of my book, where you now essentially have more people coming from outside of Mexico and Central America than from within that region, you have people coming from all over the world. So it's not just unprecedented in terms of the numbers of people who've arrived at the border over the last several years, but in terms of sort of who they are, and how they're coming.

I think it would be very difficult to argue that there is a security threat posed by, you know, asylum-seeking families from all around the world. I think what you have is humanitarian concerns rather than security concerns. I mean, even when you look at some of the people on the more conservative side of this public debate,

But you look at the statistics from the U.S. government, and there has never been someone who's crossed the border illegally, committed a terrorist attack, the southern border illegally, and then committed a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. So in terms of security concerns, now, certainly, absolutely, if...

These numbers put a strain on the system in significant part because the U.S. immigration system is outdated and broken. But if we want to talk about security concerns, there's a little statistical evidence from that in terms of the security concerns represented here.

And it may seem counterintuitive, but you can actually look at the border as being the most secure it's ever been. Now, why do I say that? I say that because what you have now is an overwhelming percentage of the people who are arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in the last several years are turning themselves in.

In order to seek asylum, in order to start that process, which means you have far fewer people who are trying to evade border patrol and essentially sneak into the country. And so in many ways, the border is more secure than it's ever been. I think a lot of things when it comes to, and I'll wrap up here.

When it comes to the border, when it comes to these numbers, I think Republican or Democratic, both administrations would have a very difficult time because there are a lot of factors in controlling those numbers. There are a lot of factors that are entirely outside of their control. And so I think any administration that promises to seal off the border or bring

You know, unlawful or irregular crossings to zero is misrepresenting reality to the American public, because that's that's impossible. It's a 2000 mile, 2000 mile border. And that has never been true.

Let's bring in a couple of reporters from the border. Rafael Carranza is a reporter with Arizona Luminaria, which is a nonprofit news organization covering Arizona, previously reported for the Arizona Republic and the USA Today Network. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. We're also joined by Salvador Rivera, who is a correspondent based in San Diego with borderreport.com. Welcome, Salvador.

Rafael, let's go to you first. I mean, what is the mood in Arizona? Obviously, a state that has been quite quite riven by division about immigration.

I think there's a lot of anticipation, a lot of questions that are finally getting answers as we're starting to get more information about what the Trump administration's policies... There was kind of a lot of signaling beforehand, but now that we're actually getting the text of the executive orders and all of these policy changes, starting to see the impact on them, I think that you can kind of put it into two buckets. You have obviously the...

immigration advocates who are very concerned about some of these challenges, what they perceive to be big challenges. I think particularly in southern Arizona, it's a very rugged, remote desert that has had thousands of migrants

you know, die attempting to cross the border, you know, after the US government launched prevention through deterrence policies, which essentially sealed off the urban areas and pushed migrants off to the more rugged remote parts. And so I think what we've seen from, you know, the first Trump administration and just, you know, previous administrations in general is that when you implement restrictions along the entire border, you create this bottleneck of migrants waiting in Mexican border cities,

that also creates like a waiting population for the cartels that are eager to exploit and smugglers to exploit. And so the concern, you know, from a lot of immigration advocates here in Arizona is that, you know, these people are going to be encouraged now because of these restrictions to go out

seek out smugglers and attempt riskier routes into the country. But then you also have a broad swath of voters here in Arizona who voted for Trump. This is one of the battlegrounds, and he won it pretty handedly. And so there's also a lot of individuals perhaps farther from the border, more in the interior in cities like Phoenix,

who want more of these types of restrictions, who see a big problem at the border and are glad that Trump is following through and taking action on some of the things that he promised. Salvador Rivera, talk to me a little bit about you grew up right near the border, right there in San Diego. I mean, do you notice anything different, you know, kind of pre-Trump administration to right now?

Well, if you gauge it by what happened from June on through the end of 2024, there really hasn't been much of a difference because if you look back at 2023 and early 2024, when we were having hundreds of migrants, asylum seekers, if you want to call them that,

arriving on U.S. soil on a daily basis compared to what's going on now is a totally different picture. If you just go by the numbers themselves, the last three months, and I don't have the figures in front of me, but for the last three months in 2024, there were on average about 11,000 crossings in the San Diego sector per month.

And that now that is the drop of about 63 percent or so here in the San Diego sector. Other parts of the country, I think El Paso is about also 63 percent and Tucson might be 87 percent. So we sort of got used to not having the big, the large numbers of migrants, asylum seekers who were coming to the border to seek asylum.

So that has been sort of like the biggest change began in June and in the months following towards the end of 2024 into what we are now, where it's relatively calm. If you go to the border and you talk to advocates who work with the border, they'll tell you that they really haven't seen the numbers that they were seeing before. We're talking about the situation on the border and Trump's executive orders. We'll be back with more right after the break.

Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We are talking about Trump's executive orders on immigration. Joined by Molly O'Toole, fellow of the Wilson Center in New America, UC Boulder Law School's Deep Gula Sacrum. We've got a couple of border reporters, Rafael Carranza, reporter with Arizona Luminaria, which is a nonprofit news org there in Arizona, and Salvador Rivera, who's a correspondent based in San Diego with borderreport.com.

I want to bring in one of our own here. Taiki Hendrix is senior editor at KQED News covering immigration. Thanks so much for joining us, Taiki. Thank you, Alexis. So you spoke to the California attorney general about these executive orders that we've been discussing. What was his response?

Yeah, I think, I mean, there's been an impression, I think, nationally that the resistance to Trump has kind of evaporated this term. We haven't seen like, you know, big pussy hat protests in Washington, that sort of thing. But in California, I would say that resistance is very strong. And I think it's embodied at the moment, both in Attorney General Rob Bonta and, you know, his...

The work he's been doing, going around the state and reminding local jurisdictions, schools, police about their responsibilities under the state sanctuary laws to not use local and state resources to cooperate with immigration enforcement.

And then also, as we saw yesterday, filing suit, joining this lawsuit against the birthright citizenship executive action. So on that level, but then also at the grassroots level, I think, you know, California has a very robust network of immigrant advocacy organizations because, as you said at the top, you know, we have a lot of immigrants. We're a state organization.

that's made up of immigrants and the children of immigrants very much so. And so those organizations I've been talking to also, and they have really been activating to provide legal aid as people are potentially facing, you know,

Arrest and deportation. Yeah, go ahead. What if we zoom in just on one place, like say in Contra Costa County? Like what's happening in one of these counties? Yeah. So Contra Costa County is an example. And other counties around the Bay also have...

You know, they said, I mean, let's sort of pull back for a minute and be clear. You know, immigration enforcement happens every day in this country. And, you know, under the Biden administration, under Democratic and Republican administrations, ICE is going out and arresting people and deporting people. Right.

And the priorities under Biden were to go after people with criminal histories, people who had absconded from, you know, final removal orders and, of course, at the border. But

So the Trump administration says, well, we're going to do that too, but we're not having any particular priorities. We're going to arrest everybody. So under the first Trump administration, there were these rapid response teams that established in Washington.

where there's a hotline you can call. There's a dispatcher who will take your call. And if there seems to be some kind of ICE activity happening in a neighborhood, or as we saw down in Kern County last week or so, the Border Patrol was up there making arrests, several dozen arrests. So they'll try to send a legal observer, whether it's a lawyer or a volunteer, out to the scene and sort of talk

talk to family members, find out what's happening. And then they also will dispatch an attorney to the nearest ICE processing center to try to meet with the detained people and provide them with some legal guidance. So I think you're seeing both Contra Costa, Alameda is just announcing today that they've got this launched. San Francisco and other communities are doing this.

And they're distributing. I think the other thing that they're doing are know your rights workshops for kids.

Immigrants and distributing little cards, little red cards that give people some guidance and some language to use if there's an ICE agent at your door, not to answer the door unless they can produce a warrant signed by a judge and your right to remain silent and your right to get some legal counsel and so forth. So those are some of the things that we're seeing ramping up now.

Yeah. You know, Deep, as we think about this federal versus, say, California or local jurisdictions, you know, in the first Trump administration, you know, cities declared themselves sanctuary cities and, you know, passed ordinances like not to work with federal law enforcement on immigration issues. There's a new DOJ Department of Justice order out this morning basically saying to investigate a

officials who are not following with the Trump immigration enforcement policies. What do you make of that? I know it just came out this morning, but what do you think might happen? Yeah, I think that like much of the executive orders and this memoranda, there's a lot of political theater here intended to, I think, cow people into working with the administration on immigration concerns.

But here's the thing, the constitutional authority for the federal government to command state and local cooperation with them on immigration enforcement simply doesn't exist. In fact, what the Supreme Court has said

and at least three different occasions over the last 30 years is that state and local authorities cannot be commandeered by federal authorities to enforce federal law. And that's not just in immigration, that's across any area.

And some of these principles were first established when the federal government passed the Brady handgun bill and was trying to require local sheriffs to do background checks before guns were issued, challenged by conservative groups. And they won on the legal theory that the federal government cannot force state and local authorities to help with federal enforcement. The same principle applies here in the immigration context.

Now, the memo by the acting Deputy Attorney General, I think, is threatening prosecution to local officials if they do not cooperate. But at the end of the day, there still has to be a federal criminal charge that they can substantiate against those local officials.

in a way that does not violate the constitutional principle that I just articulated, that state and local authorities have the independence not to enforce federal law. And so it's not clear yet what exact legal basis this memo is based on. I suppose they could attempt to substantiate a harboring or transportation or some sort of obstruction type of charge.

I will tell you that in the past, those have not been successfully used, especially against elected officials when they are simply going about their constitutional duties on a day-to-day basis and enforcing state and local rules.

You know, listener Patrick writes in to say the Trump administration is coming down strong on halting the immigration status quo. His actions screen that even if some actions will get reversed by the courts, it is unambiguous on where his policy will go. These actions have brought support, including among Hispanics. What do you think, Malio Tool, about the idea that.

There is, you know, widespread support for a major change in the way that the United States deals with immigration and with immigrants.

I mean, certainly the sort of entire debate, and this has been, you know, a long, long running debate in this country, despite the sort of national narrative that we tell ourselves about ourselves, you know, a sort of nation of immigrants. But it can be one generation of immigrants who says, okay, well, we're immigrants, but the next generation of immigrants know that they're not the good ones, we're the good ones, you know, sort of it stops here, pull the ladder up behind you. I mean, this has been the tenor of the debate.

One thing that the Trump administration 1.0 very successfully did, and particularly the people surrounding Trump for whom this is an ideological issue, like a Stephen Miller, who will be more powerful this time around, is shift the entire debate so that it's no longer about

Legal immigration versus illegal immigration, you know, a sort of refugee good, economic migrant bad, you know, sort of black and white dichotomy, whereas now the entire conversation has shifted to where broadly it's sort of all immigration bad.

You don't really hear people making the distinction, especially public officials. And you didn't hear the Biden administration really making it much a proactive case for immigration or much of a distinction. And while occasionally Trump administration officials will say, well, we're only going to go after immigrants.

illegal immigrants. I mean, we saw during the campaign, sorry, undocumented immigrants or people who've crossed the border illegally, that even when referring to Haitians in Ohio, for example, who have permission from the government to enter the country and were seeking asylum or had other forms of

status. You know, you had the J.D. Vance's of the world saying, well, it doesn't matter. In my mind, they're not here lawfully. You know, in my mind, they're illegal immigrants. So the whole tenor of the conversation has shifted. There does seem to be, you know, increased

public support for some of the types of actions that the Trump administration is promising. But, you know, there are also those promises are going to come up against realities, though that public support is for these initiatives that they've claimed that they can achieve, that are going to come up against not just legal issues, but resource issues, especially. And

And logistics such as, you know, a lot of people in the United States who are very difficult to remove, it's because they come from countries who will not accept them back. So not all of this depends just on the United States. And that was a challenge that the Biden administration faced and that the Trump administration will face as well. The U.S. only has so much power. The reinstating of remain in Mexico, for example, maybe, you know, the

The public broadly seems to support bringing that back. That's a promise that Trump made as a candidate. But that requires the cooperation of Mexico, which has indicated that it does not want to cooperate with the reinstatement of remain in Mexico. And also that was a consideration for Mexico's own Supreme Court.

Yeah.

You know, Salvador Rivera, when I was listening to you talk about the wave of folks who were arriving at the border, it did strike me. I mean, that indicates there really are some quite severe problems at the border that are potentially could be fixed. Do you see any of these executive actions as kind of fixing the problems that

have been encountered over the last few years at the border? Well, for one, we were told, and I was talking to a migrant advocate over the phone yesterday, he was telling me by the MPP going away, which is the Remain in Mexico policy, the Migrant Protection Protocols, officially, as this program is called,

The only way now to seek asylum because CBP won the online application to secure an appointment to enter the U.S. via a port of entry and to get an initial interview and then get your asylum case started, that has gone away.

So that was the only legal pathway that migrants had to seek asylum or to enter the U.S. With it being eliminated, the migrant advocate was telling me that now people will be forced once again to enter the U.S. unlawfully or illegally.

as a way to seek asylum, even if they have to return to Mexico, they will do it. They're going to come here to seek asylum that way, even if it means having to live in a city like Juarez or Tijuana for a long time. So they're saying that we could see a repeat of what we saw in 2023,

with a lot of immigrants coming across the border getting onto u.s soil and then waiting for a border patrol agent to pick them up so they can get processed and they can ask for asylum again this is from a migrant advocate who is predicting that not much is going to change it will likely to go back to the way it was in 2023 and early 2024.

Deep, we've got a bunch of questions about the birthright citizenship order. I kind of hoped you could answer a couple of them. One listener writes, "My parents legally immigrated here 50 years ago. While they were green card holders, they had me. They became naturalized citizens when I was five.

Am I no longer a U.S. citizen under this order? I can apply the same scenario to dozens of people I know. As far as I understand, the executive action is like prospective, right? I mean, it starts, supposed to start in 30 days. But it kind of feels like if you were to take the legal logic, is there anything that would prevent it from being applied retrospectively?

Your listener is quite astute in pointing to this problem. Legal scholars looking at this have noticed the same concern. The executive order is prospective. It's supposed to start after February 19th, but it purports to give a legal interpretation, a constitutional interpretation that...

the order claims has always been the way in which the 14th Amendment should have been read. And if that's so, then it's not clear why it starts a month from now rather than has always been the case. And these are some of the questions that it seems clear that either the author of that executive order did not consider or simply doesn't care about that sort of confusion and confusion

discrepancy with regards to the legal understanding. But I should say also to you that to your caller, the the even the interpretation in the in the executive order would permit the child of a lawful permanent resident to be considered a birthright citizen in the United States. Yeah.

You know, Cindy is also sort of contemplating the retroactive consequences here. This listener writes, you know, I've been thinking about this question a lot since finding some old family papers from World War II. My family's Italian-American, and it appears that the mixed status nature of those earlier generations meant they were either required to register as enemy aliens or prove they were born here, something that apparently caused a lot of problems. What would be the downstream effect on future generations if both parents are undocumented? Does that forever taint their line, creating a sort of second-class relationship

non-citizenship and perpetuity, it's also mind-boggling. You know, Taki, I wanted to ask you one last thing. You know, on the California Attorney General side, as more of these orders come down, is our Attorney General planning to file more of these kinds of lawsuits and ready to do it? It sounds like he is or, you know, his office is. And, you know, there's been talk recently

from the governor of bolstering the resources for the state attorney general's office specifically to be able to prospectively file suits to defend against possible lawsuits from the Trump administration and other legal actions. So I think that that is, you know, that's definitely in the cards as they look ahead. Just going back to your, Cindy's remark about her

Italian born parents having to register as enemy aliens. I think that's a reference to the last time that this enemy aliens act was used. It's a 1798 law that said, you know, if we're at war with a country, then we can detain and deport people, you know, nationals of that country. And the last time it was used was World War II. And I think

And it's relevant here in the Bay Area because, of course, we had especially a lot of Japanese Americans here. And the resistance to that and the repudiation of that was a lot of it centered here. Yeah, yeah.

We have been talking about Trump's executive orders on immigration, including this one that's supposed to end birthright citizenship, as well as a declaration of a national emergency on the southern border. We have been joined by KQED's Tagi Hendrick, senior editor covering immigration with KQED News. We've been joined by Salvador Rivera, correspondent based in San Diego with BorderReport.com. Rafael Carranza, who is a reporter with Arizona Luminaria, a nonprofit news organization covering immigration.

Arizona. I've also been joined by Deep Gulasekram, who's a professor of law and director of the Byron White Center for the Study of Constitutional Law at UC Boulder Law School, and Molly O'Toole, a fellow with the Wilson Center and New America. O'Toole formerly reported on immigration for the Los Angeles Times, and you should watch out for her book on global migration, which is forthcoming. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Thank you so much for listening in your calls and comments. 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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