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New York Democratic Congressman Tom Swazzi is back with us this morning, joining us from Capitol Hill.
Good morning, Congressman.
Hey, John, how are you?
Doing well, sir.
Two sentences from about your 2024 election victory from your column in the Long Island Herald.
You write that while most everyone who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in my district voted for me, another 20,000 people voted for both me and Donald Trump.
I'm grateful to every voter who supported me, but we need to learn some lessons from those 20,000 ticket splitters.
What lessons do we need to learn?
Well, in that same article, the first line was something along the lines of everybody's asking, you know, how could people vote for Donald Trump?
When instead they should be asking, why did they vote for Donald Trump?
And, you know, the people in my district that supported me while also supporting Donald Trump, I think not only do they know me, but they're sick and tired of the extremism, and they know that I reject the extremism.
They want us to embrace common sense, and they want us to work across party lines to actually get stuff done.
People are sick and tired of the finger-pointing and the attacking.
They want us to work together to actually solve problems to address the things they're concerned about, like the border, like the cost of living.
In my district, the state and local tax deduction is a very big issue.
They want public safety.
In New York, there's a big debate about public safety over the past several years.
I was one of the few Democrats endorsed by the police unions.
So I think we have to listen to what the people are saying.
They're sick of, as I said, the fighting all the time.
Let's work together to actually solve problems.
Enough with the culture wars and the identity politics.
What's bothering people?
How can we make their lives better?
Let's work together.
Let's solve the problems.
In the 119th Congress, the difference between Democrats and Republicans, just five seats.
Is that an opportunity for more working across the aisle, or is that a recipe for more partisanship?
Well, I think it's essential that we work across party lines.
And it's going to be a lot less than five seats because three people may join the Trump administration, or two of them, and one Matt Gates resigned.
So it's going to be a one-seat difference, 217 to 215.
So this is an opportunity for us to actually work together to get things done.
Let's see if we can stand up to the extremes on both sides, the far right, the far left, and work together somewhere in the middle to actually solve problems.
So how do you solve the problem of the border, a problem that has been going on for years in this country and Congress has attempted to address several times?
Well, it's 30 years and it's been growing.
I first was dealing with newcomers from Central and South America when I was the mayor of Glen Cove.
A lot of people from El Salvador especially gathering on street corners, many of them were undocumented.
So this is not a new phenomenon.
And people took, oh, the Trump administration, it was so much better.
I don't know if everybody remembers the kids in cages.
And it wasn't until COVID that things, the numbers declined so precipitously.
And as we recovered from COVID, we started to see the numbers go up.
And that's not to say there's not blame in the Biden administration.
There is.
But there's blame in the Trump administration.
There's blame in the Obama administration.
There's blame in every administration before that as well.
So we have to recognize this is a thorny problem.
Number one, we have to secure the border.
We have to spend the money to build the wall and to hire more border patrol agents and more immigration judges.
And we'll work on technology and work with other folks in Mexico and other Central American countries to stop people from coming to the southern border in the first place.
First thing is we need to secure the border.
A lot of that was in the Senate bipartisan deal that was proposed back in February of 2020, earlier this year, a big topic of my special election campaign when I replaced George Santos.
Second thing we need to do is fix the broken asylum system.
In 1980 when we first started the asylum system, the law that was passed in 1980, people were excited about asylum.
When someone said I'm defecting from the Soviet Union, people in America were like, yes, great, wow, you're defecting, claim asylum.
America's great, you know, the beacon of hope throughout the world.
We love the idea of asylum in those days.
Now we're being overrun with people that are abusing the asylum system mainly because the cartels and organized crime and the coyotes are making billions of dollars to bring people to our southern border, coaching them to claim asylum.
Most of these cases are bogus claims.
85% of them are ultimately rejected where people are denied asylum.
The problem is it takes six, seven, eight years because the system's so overwhelmed to actually adjudicate the cases.
So we need to fix the broken asylum system to update the law that was last updated in 1986 to fix the standards as to how do you get through the first checkpoint.
And we need to stop accepting, I believe, asylum applications at the southern border.
Instead, we should be having people apply for asylum in safe mobility offices throughout the world.
You know, the Republicans were talking about remain in Mexico.
Well, remain in Mexico is not really a great policy because people who hike all the way to the southern border, then we get them to stay in Mexico get abused while they're there and they get assaulted and they get raped and they get fleeced of their money.
Instead, we should have people throughout the world.
We have three of them being set up now by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security where people can apply in safe locations throughout the world for asylum.
They can stay in these safe locations and if they're accepted for asylum, they can come to America.
If they're not accepted, they don't get to come to America.
But instead of people waiting in Mexico or waiting here in the United States of America while these cases are adjudicated, let's have them apply in places that are close to where they live in safe locations and have the cases adjudicated there.
So one, secure the border, two, fix the broken asylum system, and three, let's modernize the legal migration system and treat people like human beings.
People that came here as dreamers when they were little kids and they've been here for literally 30 years, 20 years, have otherwise followed the rules.
This is their country.
They graduated from high school.
They're now either in college or they're working full time or they're in the military.
Let's give them a path to legalization.
It doesn't have to be a path to citizenship.
Just make it so that they can travel freely and that they can live their lives, they can pay their taxes and they can stop looking over their shoulder.
But let's legalize them, give them the work permits and the green cards and the authorization for them to live a productive life instead of living in the shadows.
Same thing with TPS recipients.
People have been here 20, 30 years that we invited to America because there was an earthquake or a civil war or something that happened in their country.
Let's give them a path to legalization.
Let's do something with the farm workers that we've been talking about forever.
There's so much bipartisan agreement on, we just can't get it over the finish line.
Let's work on the Afghan readjustment, all these people in Afghanistan that helped us during the Afghan war that want to come to the United States of America that we believe should come to America.
Let's fix that.
Let's help the health care workers.
Let's build a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, of businesses, badges, and the Bible to work together to treat people like human beings, to make sure our communities are safe, and to make sure our businesses can succeed in our country, and our economy can thrive, and people can pay their taxes and pay their Social Security taxes and live without having to live in the shadows.
It's all doable if we can just get over the politics and the extremism, the finger-pointing, to work together to actually solve the problem.
I'll just get out of the way and let you chat with callers.
We'll start in Long Island, Glen Cove, New York.
Hey, it's my hometown.
There you go.
William, Democrat, go ahead.
Good morning, everybody.
Thank you, C-SPAN.
My question is going right where you just were with the moderator, representative, and that is concerning mass deportation in specific.
But before I get to it, I'm 62.
I'm born on the North Shore.
I've been in Glencove for a year after being over in Port Washington, living across the street from Tony Durso and his wife.
Beautiful people.
I'm also 62.
I'm 62.
I'm 62 also.
And I'm a regular guy, too.
Okay, so I'm in the house of La Crosse player, and you're a Glen Cove guy.
It's okay.
So I'm going to ask the question, and I'm not going to get into the Santos and Desposito self-immolations.
That you can talk about with your caucus.
Let's get to the question.
And that would be, I've been thinking for quite a while, and you're the highest ranking person I can put this question to.
How would you approach in your caucus with your team from New York, with Hakeem team and everyone else, if Trump is playing chess?
And it's just a pawn move.
It's a pawn move regarding the mass deportation to 13 million.
But he turns around and says, let's legislate a worker program without any certainty or absolute path to permanency, but with a legal status that if you do not, if you do not register and you're undocumented today, you'll be subject to deportation.
If you do register, you're going to get a guest worker type of status unless you have a felonious background.
How do you think you guys should work across the aisle to make that happen?
Because I think that's where this is going.
Well, I think that would be great if we could give people a pathway to legalization so that they can work and they can productively contribute to our society and they can pay their taxes and stop living in the shadows.
So I love that idea.
I don't know that we're getting to that part.
As far as mass deportations, you know, they're talking now about deporting criminals.
Well, I support the idea of deporting criminals.
That's what we should do, and we should let them and work with them to accomplish that objective.
We have to be careful, though, that government's not always good at doing things.
Sometimes they make some bad mistakes.
And when we start seeing parents pulled away from their kids or kids pulled away from their parents, or we start seeing people show up and knock down doors of people that, you know, a criminal used to live there, but now they've moved out and there's a family living there and the family's being intimidated by their door getting knocked down, there's going to be problems that are going to come.
This would be much better if we could work together and set up a reasonable system so that people's rights are protected, but also working together to deport criminals.
So I think that what you're talking about sounds like a very reasonable thing.
Let's work together to people, give people the authorization to work without being living in the shadows.
Portsmouth, Virginia, Susan, Republican, good morning.
You're along with Congressman Tom Swasey.
Hi, good morning.
I just have two comments.
When the Democrats were in power, they're smash mouth.
When they're out of power, it's let's work together, if you ever notice that.
I'm sorry I had the cold.
The 320 missing children, maybe if we had put them in cages and determined who their parents are, we wouldn't be missing them.
So maybe cages were a good idea, sir.
Thank you.
Okay, well, I don't think cages are a good idea, but let me just say very clearly, you know, I was first elected to Congress in 2016, took office in 2017.
That's when President Trump was first elected, and the Republicans controlled the House and controlled the Senate.
And I was the vice chairman of the Problem Solvers Caucus, and I've been working across party lines, whether the Republicans are in power or whether the Democrats are in power.
Because you can't get anything done unless people work together across party lines.
This past Congress, the Congress we're sitting in right now, was one of the least productive Congresses in the history of the United States of America.
Harry Truman used to talk about the Do Nothing Congress.
This was the do-nothing est Congress.
I came back to Congress.
I was in Congress for six years.
I ran for governor of New York.
I got my butt kicked in a Democratic primary.
I didn't run for reelection.
The race took place, and this guy, George Santos, became the congressman.
And the people kicked him out of the members of Congress kicked him out.
And I ran in a special election and came back in February.
One of the biggest issues that we were facing in the country at the time was a bill to fund Israel, fund Ukraine, and fund Taiwan.
And the Speaker, Speaker Johnson, who I started with in 2017, was worried about putting the bill on the floor because Marjorie Taylor Greens and others were saying, if you put that bill on the floor, we're going to kick you out of Congress.
We're going to, like we did with Kevin McCarthy.
I was the first Democrat in the country to say, Mr. Speaker, if you put that bill on the floor, not only will it pass overwhelmingly bipartisan, but more importantly, if they try to kick you out, I will vote to keep you as the Speaker, even though you're a Republican and I'm a Democrat.
And that became exactly what happened.
We put the bill on the floor.
It passed overwhelmingly bipartisan.
It was one of the few things that got done that was productive in this past Congress.
It passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
And when they tried to kick him out, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others tried to kick him out, many, many Democrats joined in supporting to keep him as the Speaker.
So we've got to always work together.
I don't even know what smash mouth means.
We've got to try and work together regardless of who's in power.
Don Bacon was on before you and we were talking about the 119th Congress and he said that he was hopeful it would be more productive and believed it would be in part because three particular members are not coming back.
He did not choose to name those members.
But in terms of productivity, this 119th Congress versus the 118th, what are your thoughts?
Well, let me first say that everybody loves Bacon and he's a great guy, Don Bacon.
And I'm working together with him.
You know, there's a guy named Morgan Luttrell from Texas and Don Bacon and Dan Newhouse and others that were trying to work together to build this coalition of business, badges, and the Bible to figure out a way to do the things I was talking about earlier with the border, to secure the border, to fix the broken asylum system, and to modernize the legal immigration system.
I think there's tremendous hope for this Congress because if there's one thing that's clear is that people are sick and tired of the extremism, and I think the election results and the tightness of the margin between Democrats and Republicans illustrates is that people really want us to work together.
Janet in Illinois Independent, good morning.
You're next.
Yes, I think the immigration system needs to be handled.
In the first place, immigration problems are taking place all over the world.
North Africans want to get to Europe.
Some Central Americans want to get to the United States.
The question is, why are these people having to come here in the first place?
What has happened to them?
Have the cartels taken over their homes?
Have the cartels robbed them of their title to their land?
Have they kidnapped their children, left them penniless?
What is going on anyway?
We need to form a mini-United Nations of the Western Hemisphere and find out just what is happening in Central and South America that is causing these people to come.
We cannot house the whole of the world here in the United States.
And neither can England and Europe house the whole of Africa and Asia.
Was that Janet?
I think her name was Janet.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, that's such an excellent point, Janet, that not enough people talk about.
It's about the root causes of why are so many people fleeing to try to come to the United States of America, paying all this money to the cartels and the organized crime and the coyotes to try and make that awful trek to come to the southern border, as well as, as you said, into Europe and other places throughout the world where they feel there's a safe haven.
There are more refugees in the world today than there were after World War II.
I mean, just think about that.
Tens of millions of people who've been displaced from their homeland because of war, because of famine, because of climate change, because of persecution, because of economic circumstances, people that have just lost a place to live or where they feel safe to live.
And that's the root causes of the problems that exist.
And every problem we face in our country, every problem we face in our world, quite frankly, but here in America, every problem we face is complicated.
Nothing is simple.
Anybody who says, why don't you just, doesn't know what they're talking about.
We need people to stop trying to solve problems in an environment of fear and anger where everybody's just yelling at each other.
That doesn't work in your family.
That doesn't work in your business.
And it certainly doesn't work in the halls of Congress.
If you want to solve problems, you need people of goodwill to sit down across the table from each other and say, well, I think this.
And then they say, oh, I think that.
And they may disagree with each other.
But let's work together to find common ground so we can move forward to actually solve the problems that people face.
You need people to have goodwill, to have some trust, and to talk to each other.
And stop the yelling and screaming.
It'll never solve anything.
Back to your home state, West Babylon, New York.
This is John, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Mr. Swazi.
Yes.
I was raised in Glen Cove.
I went to Glencove High School, and I think I was probably your, was it your father or your brother was my mayor?
Well, in the 50s, my father was the mayor.
In the 70s and 80s, my uncle was the mayor.
I was the mayor in the 90s, and then my cousin was the mayor after that, and we never got along with each other.
That's politics for you.
There's always been a Swazi in Glen Cove, so I know the name quite well.
And, you know, I graduated from Glencove High School in 1965, so I think it was your father that was my mayor.
Yeah, when you were a young boy, in 65, so in the 50s, my father was the mayor.
My father was born in Italy, came to the United States as a little boy, first kid to go to college, fought in World War II, was a navigator on a B-24, got the Distinguished Flying Cross, and came home and went to law school on the GI Bill.
And he couldn't get a job at a law firm because nobody liked the Italians, because the Italians had teamed up with the Germans during World War II.
So he had to start a law firm with another Italian guy in Glen Cove.
And at 28 years old, he ran for city court judge.
He was the youngest judge in the history of New York State.
What a country America is.
So a lot of what I do is always about trying to live up to my father's legacy.
Yeah, what a country is right.
I love that.
Now, let me ask you a question with this illegal alien.
How are you going to find them?
And then if you have a Gavin Newsom to have to deal with, how are you going to find the bad ones to deport them?
So that's a tough question.
You say, how do you find the bad ones?
That's a really important part of figuring out the right way to do this.
But I think that Democrats would make a big mistake if they try and resist or fight the idea of deporting criminals.
And that should be something that we should be working together on.
I don't think any reasonable person thinks that you can immigrate to the United States of America illegally, commit a crime, and then you should get to stay here.
Everybody thinks we should be deporting criminals.
Now, defining what a criminal is is not easy, but being guilty of a crime is a pretty good definition.
So we should be working together to deport criminals, and we shouldn't be resisting that effort.
And I can pretty much safely guarantee, as I said earlier, there are going to be problems that are going to arise from that.
There are going to be mistakes made by government, as government often makes mistakes.
It's a big giant bureaucracy in that process.
So we have to be reasonable.
We have to be smart about how we go about doing that.
And to do that, we need to work together to identify who the criminals are, especially convicted criminals, and work together to deport them.
The next problem you're going to face is, you know, when you want to deport people, you have to have a place to deport them to.
But we don't have an agreement with many countries from which undocumented persons came from to send them back to those countries.
We're going to have to get agreement from other countries for us to deport these folks back to those countries.
So it's really going to be a tough situation.
The only way to actually solve it is by getting people to work together.
Just a couple minutes left with Congressman Tom Swazi, Democrat of New York.
This is Sean Independence of Baltimore.
Good morning.
Good day.
My question to Mr. Swazi is, what is the Democrat Party going to do to get the voters back they used to have, like myself?
I voted Democrat all my life until this election.
I had to vote for Trump because your party, now I know Mr. Swazi, you're different.
I heard some of the things you saying you come out the border.
So you're different from a lot of Democrats, but let's be real.
The party as a whole, they don't think like you like that.
I voted Democrat all my life until this past election.
I had to vote for Trump because all the Democrats were offering me were just transgenderism, illegal immigration, abortion.
They weren't worried about the economy.
They were lying.
And like that last caller brought up, you have to deal with people in your party like Gavin Newsome, the extremist.
They want to act like they want to protect illegal aliens who commit crimes.
And this is not Gavin Newsome.
You have the guy, the mayor in Denver, the non-thinking mayor in Chicago, and then the mayor in New York City, he catching flat for doing the right thing.
So pretty much my question is, how do you think, how can you convince your party to kind of think like you?
And, you know, what are you all doing to get some voters back?
Because I tell you, it'll be a long time before I vote Democrat again.
Thank you.
Well, Sean, you know, we want you back.
And the bottom line is, is this what I've been saying, as I said in the beginning of the show, we have to stop saying, how could they vote for Donald Trump?
You have to say, why did they vote for Donald Trump?
And I think you said it better than anybody.
I mean, people are just sick of the extremism.
And most Democrats, I know this for a fact, most Democrats, especially elected officials, reject extremism.
The problem is, is that not enough people are speaking out against the extremism because they're afraid they're going to get beaten up for expressing their viewpoints, like the viewpoints that you just articulated.
People have got to show some courage.
You know, one of the ways to get that courage is to actually spend time listening to your voters, listening to people like you, Sean, and people who live in my district and coming on shows like this and doing town halls and just talking to people.
Then you'll have the confidence as an elected official to stand up and say what the people are saying instead of listening to just the pollsters and the consultants and everybody's trying to tell you what the party line is.
The party line is not working.
Now listen, Republicans have tons of extremists as well.
You've heard of Matt Gates and Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
They've got their extremists and they won't talk about gun violence because they're afraid of their base and they won't talk about when President Trump does suddenly say some extraordinarily unusual things.
They've got the same problem, but I'm a Democrat so I'll worry about the Democrats right now and I'll worry about America which is even more important.
Politicians on both sides need to reject extremism.
Stop being bullied by the base.
Stop being pushed around and listen to what reasonable people like you are saying which is you know what?
I just want to pay my bills and take care of my family and raise my family in safety.