Is Any Immigrant Safe In Trump's America?
26:50 Share

It's Friday, March 28th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What Today, the show that has stunned that President Donald Trump didn't throw out the first pitch Thursday for the Washington Nationals. I am shocked and surprised that our fit, athletic president didn't make an appearance. Sad!

On today's show, the Health and Human Services Department says it wants to lay off 10,000 full-time employees. And the fallout from Signalgate continues, even as the White House tries its damnedest to make it all go away. But let's start with immigration.

Now, if you listen to the Trump administration, everything on the immigration front is, you guessed it, awesome. They're getting all the bad guys and America is being made great again, or something. Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt talking about the arrest of an alleged MS-13 gang leader on Thursday with a level of enthusiasm I find deeply worrying coming from anyone over the age of 10.

This is what happens when you have competent federal leadership at the top working with state and local law enforcement on the ground to put bad guys in jail. And this is a directive that has come from President Trump here at the White House to law enforcement agencies across the country. This president has your back and he is going to support you as you pursue illegal immigrants and you pursue violent criminals in American communities.

Things are not awesome. Actually, things are pretty fucked up for undocumented people, for people with legal permanent status, even for American citizens. Take El Salvador, where the administration has been sending allegedly undocumented migrants, including possible members of a Venezuelan gang, to a super prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center. The administration

The administration is very proud of this fact, so much so that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the facility on Wednesday and, of course, made a video about it, using the people imprisoned there as background props. If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face. First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.

That same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit kept in place a temporary block on deporting people under an 18th century wartime law that was used to remove them from the country. But American citizens are getting caught up in Trump's immigration dragnet, too. Earlier this month, according to multiple reports and Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, an American citizen was arrested by ICE agents in Virginia, despite his efforts to show them his ID, and was only released after being handcuffed and questioned.

Oh, and let's not forget the administration's efforts to expel legal permanent residents and visa holders for protesting the war in Gaza. The most recent example? On Tuesday, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts University was arrested near Boston and sent to an ICE facility in Louisiana. She was here on a student visa. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell described her arrest as a, quote, ambush. Her crime? Co-authoring an op-ed in her student newspaper asking Tufts to divest from Israel.

Or, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, causing a, quote, ruckus. If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus. We're not going to give you a visa.

If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa. And once you've lost your visa, you're no longer legally in the United States. And we have a right, like every country in the world has a right, to remove you from our country. So it's just that simple. Rubio went on to say the administration has revoked more than 300 student visas. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.

Remember, this is the Free Speech Administration. Just as long as your free speech doesn't cause a ruckus. We will post that op-ed in our show notes, FYI. So to get into what Trump's immigration enforcement looks like on the ground, I spoke with reporter Ted Hessen. He covers immigration for Reuters. Ted, welcome to What Today. Thank you for having me. So Secretary Noem is scheduled to be in Mexico today as part of her three-country tour, but we have to start with her Wednesday visit to this place.

Supermax prison in El Salvador where the Venezuelans being deported by the US are held. These are people who the US says are gang members. What exactly did she accomplish with this visit besides creeping me out? And really, what's the goal with this whole Latin American trip? This was Secretary Noem's first international trip.

And I think it sets a tone that she's prioritizing immigration. We've actually seen that across the board amongst President Trump's lead political appointees where they've tried to put immigration front and center. Of course, with all the controversy around the flights and the use of the Alien Enemies Act to send these Venezuelan migrants away,

to El Salvador, it's really boosted the prominence of the storyline. And I think that in some ways, you know, she's there and capturing the moment and promoting this even further and trying to further kind of raise the awareness of what they've done. That said, it was a tour of the prison, this prison that's known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. It's called Secot in Spanish.

And it's the largest, is it one of the largest prisons in the world, correct?

That's my understanding. I mean, I know it's a 40,000-person capacity, or that's what they say it holds, which must put it in that sort of rank. It's what you might call a mega prison. And the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, says that it's used to hold essentially the worst of the worst criminals there and people that he says will not get out. So it has sort of fearsome and notorious reputation as a black hole, really, for detainees who go in there.

Great. And about those deported Venezuelans, the administration says they were targeted for deportation because they're suspected members of the gang Trenda Aragua. Has the administration provided any more information about how it determined that? Because we heard from the administration earlier this week that not being on a watch list could just be a sign that they were secretly gang members or something like that.

The Trump administration says that they sent 238 Venezuelan men to El Salvador who were, as you mentioned, alleged members of Tren de Aragua. They've put very little information forward about the people they've sent. They haven't shared their names. They haven't shared alleged charges or criminal convictions. In one court filing, there was an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who said that many of those who were deported to Venezuela had no criminal records in the U.S.

And it did list several crimes that they may have been charged with or convicted of, but it didn't actually spell out specific cases. So there was no way to look back and see what the criminal record might have been or what their criminality might have been. And I should say, family members of some of the men believed to have been sent there have said they're not criminals and have said they're not members of this gang.

On Wednesday, a U.S. appeals court upheld a decision from a lower court judge to temporarily block the administration from deporting migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, that wartime statute that you mentioned. How significant is this?

This is significant in that the use of this act, which has only been used three times in U.S. history, it was created in 1798 and was used in the War of 1812 and both world wars. It's being used novelly here. It hasn't been applied in the past decades.

specifically against illegal immigration as President Trump is doing right now. So it's really a test to see, can he use this authority and will it hold up in court? We can expect it's likely that it will eventually be appealed up to the Supreme Court, and then we'll really get a test of what those nine justices think about this and whether it might be lawful or not.

Moving on to an image that has rattled me and a lot of people. There's video circulating of immigration officers approaching, arresting, and handcuffing a doctoral student at Tufts University on the sidewalk in broad daylight.

Another doctoral student from the University of Alabama, reportedly from Iran, was also apprehended by ICE on Wednesday, according to several reports. What can you tell us about these situations? We know that most of the students being targeted were in some way involved in campus protests against the war in Gaza or opposition to their university's handling of policies around it. But beyond that, like, why them?

It appears to be a broader effort by the administration to really crack down on this type of speech. And it's a politicized effort in that it really is kind of taking a stance on the conflict in Gaza and saying that,

If foreign students are discussing it in certain ways, they're interpreting that as being pro-Hamas, and they're going to take actions to revoke student visas or potentially revoke green cards. And one thing they've said over and over again, they're saying that having a green card, having a student visa is a privilege and not a right. And if you violate it in ways that they believe go beyond the scope of it, then they'll revoke it.

The Washington Post a few days ago reported that ICE is getting closer to an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to use tax ID info to track people down who might be living here illegally. What does this say about how far the administration is going to go to root people out, especially people who are, to be clear, paying taxes?

One big difference of how the Trump administration has approached immigration in Trump's second term is that it's a whole-of-government approach. And you can see the IRS is involved. The State Department is involved. The Pentagon has become a huge player. I mean, there really is no agency where the White House does not see some role in the immigration crackdown. It's interesting to me because during the election, we kept hearing Trump and others say that they were only going to deport criminals.

And yet they're not doing those like big ice raids that I think a lot of people were worried about. Yet they're going after students and couples and families, people who do not have a criminal record of any sort, people who even might be asylum applicants or have some sort of legal status. They are being the ones who are arrested, detained and deported. Are we seeing a shift in who the administration is targeting?

Absolutely. And I think on January 20th, when Trump took office, one of the executive orders he signed empowered ICE officers to make more arrests of people who did not have criminal records, who were just immigration violators. And month by month, as we've looked at the ICE data, we're seeing more and more people who are just simply immigration violators placed into custody. And when you look at, say, the ICE social media account on X or where they're promoting, um,

what they've been doing. They're focusing heavily on the arrests of people with some sort of criminal charge or conviction. But by the numbers, we're seeing increases as well as those who are just simply immigration violators. I want to give some context because I remember during the Obama administration, President Barack Obama was referred to as the deporter-in-chief. And there are a lot of people right now who are very afraid. They're afraid of massive raids on workplaces, but they're also afraid of being snatched off the street, people of varying statuses.

How is what we're seeing and hearing different from previous administration like Barack Obama's when it comes to deporting people?

I think, well, one thing just by the numbers, we actually saw Trump's first month in office. He struggled somewhat to get the actual deportation numbers up compared with former President Biden. And part of the reason is that under Biden, there were just many more people crossing the border illegally and they were taken into custody and then quickly deported. Since Trump's taken office, those numbers have really gone down to record lows.

relatively few people crossing the border in February and then continuing into this month in March. And it's meant that more of the deportations are people coming from the interior and people who've been here longer. So I think the character of that may start to become clearer as time goes on, because if you're deporting more and more people who've been here for long periods of time, there's different social ramifications and there could be, well, we may be seeing more and more pushback on it.

As a reporter, you've been covering immigration for a long time. What are you hearing from people who are worried about being deported? How worried do they say that they are?

You hear mixed things, but you certainly do hear concerns. I think that, you know, I've heard from people who are Venezuelan who've seen what's happened to Venezuelans recently, not just sent to El Salvador, as what we talked about, but previously sent to Guantanamo Bay, to the U.S. Naval base there. We're seeing more and more people detained at routine check-ins

at ICE. These are things that people would have previously done for months or years before and gone and checked in with no problem. So I think there's a feeling amongst anyone who might not have a permanent status that they could potentially be subject to immigration enforcement. Ted, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. That was my conversation with reporter Ted Hessen. He covers immigration for Reuters. We will link to his work in our show notes.

We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What Today is brought to you by Delete.me. Delete.me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable.

DeleteMe does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. And DeleteMe isn't just a one-time service. DeleteMe is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the internet. As a person with a pretty active online presence, privacy is super important to me. It's so critical to make sure the information I don't want online stays offline.

Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete.me, now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete.me plan when you go to joindelete.me.com slash wad and use promo code wad at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me.com slash wad and enter code wad at checkout. That's joindelete.me.com slash wad, code wad.

Have you experienced serious complications with a Perigard IUD, like breakage or fracture? You're not alone. Keller Postman is here to help. Tap the banner now for a free case review. We're helping women hold manufacturers accountable. If eligible, you may be entitled to compensation of up to $200,000. Don't wait. Tap now or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to see if you qualify. Your health matters and justice is within reach.

Tap the banner or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to get started today. This is attorney advertising. Substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating. And so as a black woman in recovery, hope must be loud.

It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable. It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay. When we learn the power of hope, recovery is possible. Find out how at startwithhope.com. Brought to you by the National Council for Mental Well-Being, Shatterproof, and the Ad Council. Here's what else we're following today. Headlines.

It was sensitive information, not classified and inadvertently released. And what we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested she has no plans to have the Justice Department look into the Signalgate scandal that's embroiled many of our top national security officials.

Bondi was asked about potential DOJ involvement during a press conference Thursday. She responded by repeating the company line that the information in the chat was not classified, and then pivoted to, but her emails.

If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton's home that she was trying to bleach bit. Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden's garage that Hunter Biden had access to. This was not classified information and we are very pleased with the results of that operation.

She did not mention the classified documents President Donald Trump may have kept next to a Mar-a-Lago toilet. And a reminder, it's been nine years since Hillary Clinton ran for anything. Nine years. I was a child then.

Anyway, the chat in which high-level officials like National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed detailed military plans ahead of imminent strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen also accidentally included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Oops. It's unclear what, if any, consequences the Trump administration will face for what it's called a, quote, mistake.

Top officials within the administration are singing in unison about how there is nothing to see here. But some cracks are starting to show. Also on Thursday, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee signed a joint letter asking the acting inspector general to investigate what happened. And a D.C. federal judge ordered top cabinet officials to preserve all messages from the Signal Group chat between March 11th and 15th.

The decision came after a government watchdog group, American Oversight, sued members of the chat group for allegedly violating the Federal Records Act. That law requires federal officials to preserve official government records.

Oh, and the judge assigned to that case, Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in D.C., also happens to be overseeing the legal proceedings tied to another Trump administration mess, the one we talked about earlier, regarding the deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. We'll emphasize, as the judge did during the hearing, that cases are assigned via an automated system. He's just a lucky guy.

The White House has withdrawn New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik's nomination to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In a post on Truth Social Thursday, President Trump said he asked Stefanik to stay in Congress. He wrote, it's, quote, essential that we maintain every Republican seat and that, quote, there are others that can do a good job at the United Nations. Elise Stefanik, hardest hit.

Stefanik was Trump's first cabinet nominee. Her confirmation had been delayed over concerns about Republicans' slim House majority. Right now, they can't really afford to lose any votes if they want to pass legislation without Democrats.

Republicans also won't have to white-knuckle it through another special election to fill her seat. The announcement comes ahead of two special elections in Florida next week, for seats vacated by now-National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Representative Matt Gaetz, who flamed out after Trump nominated him for attorney general. Not to worry. Trump said Stefanik, a longtime ally of the president, is fantastic and cushioned the blow by writing, quote, "'I look forward to the day when Elise is able to join my administration in the future.'"

As of our recording late Thursday, the White House had not named a replacement. I want to promise you now that we're going to do more with less. No American is going to be left behind. Sure. More federal worker layoffs were announced Thursday, this time at the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.

The department said it will lay off 10,000 full-time employees as part of a broader reorganization effort. That's on top of the roughly 10,000 workers who have already accepted the Trump administration's offer for deferred resignations. Two agencies within HHS will be hit particularly hard by all the cuts, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agencies combined will lose about 6,000 people. In

In a video posted to Twitter Thursday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this is all for the greater good. The real overhaul is improving the health of the entire nation to make America healthy again.

So if you do the math, we're losing about 20,000 people who help monitor disease outbreaks, study human health, check our food and medicine, and run Medicare and Medicaid because Kennedy thinks too many people work those jobs. I think most Americans would agree with me that throwing more money at health care isn't going to solve the problem or would have solved it already.

On Wednesday, HHS also abruptly canceled $12 billion in federal health grants to states, money that helps them track diseases and pay for services for mental health and addiction treatment. Among those terminated grants were a handful going to public health departments in West Texas. Local health officials say that money was helping pay for the response to the ongoing measles outbreak there.

On an absolutely related note, I'm going to get every vaccine possible when I get off work. You know, while we still have people to administer them safely. The Social Security Administration said it will partially walk back its plan changes to the way recipients verify their identities to get benefits. The agency announced earlier this month a new anti-fraud measure. It would require applicants who can't verify their identity online to do so in person at a field office and not over the phone.

The rule change prompted heavy backlash, considering that it asks disabled and elderly Americans to either become tech-savvy or travel God knows how far to a Social Security office just to apply for benefits like Medicare. In a statement Wednesday, the Social Security Administration said it would push back the start of those changes until mid-April. And it created some exemptions to the policy. Those applying for Medicare, disability benefits, and supplemental security income will still be able to verify their ID over the phone.

The change came one day after the American Federation for the Blind met with acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek to communicate their obvious concerns about how this would make Social Security benefits virtually inaccessible for some people. And that's the news. One more thing. The White House Easter Egg Roll. It's an annual tradition in which the President of the United States stands next to a giant bunny while tons of kids play on the White House lawn.

It dates back to the 1870s and the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, who served one term as president, refused to run for re-election, and just went home to Ohio to hang out for the rest of his life. Admirable.

Anyway, the Trump administration announced Monday that like basically everything else in President Donald Trump's life, the White House Easter egg roll is now a branding opportunity. The White House, through an outside production company called Harbinger, is soliciting corporate sponsorships for this year's Easter egg roll. They range from $75,000 to $200,000 and offer logo and branding opportunities.

The administration says the money will go to the White House Historical Association, but ethics experts have some concerns. See, for Donald Trump, pretty much everything is a branding opportunity. Everything, and I mean everything, is a chance for Donald Trump and members of his family and people he likes to make money.

I mean, let's talk about cryptocurrency. First, there were Donald Trump and Melania Trump meme coins launched in January, which are crypto tokens based on internet memes because, sure.

And they pulled in a ton of actual money from actual people. Here's the Wall Street Journal to explain. The Trump coin launched at basically zero. And in just a few hours, it achieved a market value as high as $15 billion. That is billions of dollars for Trump memes.

And the crypto adventures don't end, because on Tuesday, the Trump family's crypto company, World Liberty Financial, announced that it was launching a stablecoin. A stablecoin is a crypto token intended to maintain a specific value, though they often don't actually do that. And keep in mind that World Liberty Financial is led by the trusted team of Donald Trump's sons and a group of people who used to run a company called Date Hotter Girls and a Get Rich Quick online course.

But really, did you expect anything else? Here's the thing. I know it seems pretty obvious at this point, and maybe it's cringe to say it, but, um,

None of this is normal. Or good. Not one bit. It is not good to be using the White House to make money. And let's not even get into how this administration is trying to help Elon Musk, the richest man on the face of the earth, make more money. The Commerce Secretary urged people to buy Tesla stock on Fox News for Pete's sake. The Trump administration sees its job as selling Donald Trump to anyone who will buy. And regrettably, that seems to be working for him. ♪

Before we go, Monday is Trans Day of Visibility. Not that trans people are ever invisible. We see them every day, not to brag.

Speaking of which, Woodworking, the debut novel from Yellow Jackets writer and culture critic Emily St. James, is getting a ton of well-earned praise from Vogue, Vox, and The Atlantic. Most importantly, it has 4.55 stars on Goodreads. It's a fun and moving novel. The book follows a newly out trans high school teacher in small town South Dakota who forms an unexpected bond with an openly trans student at the school.

Grab your copy at Cricut.com slash books or anywhere you like to get books. And while you're at it, support the trans people in your life because that's what you should do. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, celebrate the weekend by contemplating that Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he wants to, quote, inflict as much pain as possible on Americans because of tariffs and tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading, I'm not just about how we used to have a totally normal relationship with Canada. We'd beat them in basketball, we'd lose to them in hockey, and we'd read Anne of Green Gables and think, huh, sounds like a nice place, like me. What Today is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and sorry, Canada. Things are getting weird, but I still think you're cool.

Waterday is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Forb. Our producer is Michelle Alloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Life is full of exciting moments. Whether you're buying a new home, opening an account as you welcome a new family member, or planning for retirement, you need a bank that's there when it matters. At Atlantic Union Bank, you'll find helpful people and digital tools to make banking for all of life's moments a little easier. Because you deserve a financial partner who cares as much as you do. Call, visit us online, or drop by a branch to learn more. Atlantic Union Bank. Any way you bank.

Thank you.

Don't wait. Tap now or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to see if you qualify. Your health matters and justice is within reach. Tap the banner or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to get started today. This is attorney advertising.