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Feb. 1, 2025 19:14-20:01 - CSPAN
46:46
Washington Journal Michelle Hackman
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Appearances
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tammy thueringer
cspan 03:58
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tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Joining us now to discuss the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts is Michelle Hackman.
She's an immigration policy reporter with the Wall Street Journal.
Michelle, welcome back to the program.
unidentified
Thanks for having me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
We'll start with one of your headlines from this week in the Wall Street Journal: Trump ramps up deportation efforts after slow start.
Tell us when the deportation efforts started and what they look like right now.
unidentified
Yeah, we wrote that story because a few days before Trump took office, we caught wind that they were planning a mass raid in Chicago basically the Tuesday after he took office.
And we reported it and by reporting it, I think actually temporarily called it off.
And so those first few days, we sort of were tracking their efforts.
You know, they were blasting out press releases and videos showing deportations.
But by all accounts, those seemed pretty routine.
I mean, they seemed like business as usual for the sort of Biden levels of deportations, the types of people being deported.
And so last weekend, we suddenly noticed this uptick in them sort of trying to bring up their numbers and arrest more people per day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
And when we talk about who they are focusing on, explain who that is.
What's the priority for them?
unidentified
So it's a really interesting question, Tammy, because that answer has shifted over time.
You know, when Trump was a candidate, he would say, I want to deport everybody.
I want to go after 15 million people.
Well, first of all, it's not even clear if there are 15 million people who are eligible for deportation in the country.
But after he won, we started to see Trump and his advisors sort of narrow that group.
And I think that that came out of a recognition that what he'd been promising was sort of not practically possible, right?
And so they said, we're going to go after people with criminal histories.
We, you know, ICE had once estimated that there are approximately 700,000 immigrants here illegally who have some kind of criminal record.
And so that, I think, probably seemed like a more manageable size of a population to them.
And it's definitely in the first two weeks what we've seen them prioritizing in terms of where they've been concentrating arrests.
But it doesn't mean they're only going for criminals.
I mean, they're arresting other people too.
And I think that's in part because they want to drive up their numbers.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
And how are they finding the undocumented immigrants that they are apprehending or at least talking with?
unidentified
Yeah, so when you see ICE go out and do an arrest, that is typically because they're working off, you know, something called a target list that they've developed over time that they use sort of intelligence and other factors to put together.
These are people that they have prioritized for arrest and deportation, typically people with some kind of criminal record, or sometimes people who have received a final order of deportation from a judge.
And so typically the way ICE works is it creates those lists.
You know, let's say they'll have a list of, these are not precise numbers, but like let's say they have a list of about 2,000 people in Chicago for an operation.
They'll go and try to hit as many of those people as they can.
But the thing is about those lists is that especially people who have more serious criminal histories are typically not the easiest people to get.
They sort of know the drill with police.
They know how to evade ICE arrest.
And so it's actually a lot easier to arrest someone with no criminal history whatsoever who may not know that you don't need to open your front door for an ICE officer and avoid an arrest.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Our guest, Michelle Hackman, is an immigration policy reporter with the Wall Street Journal.
If you have a question or a comment for her, you can start calling in now.
The lines, Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 2027-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
Michelle, you've talked, you've mentioned Chicago a couple times already.
When we look at who is actually carrying out these ICE raids and the deportation efforts, explain the role of the federal government versus state and local officials.
unidentified
Yeah, so primary authority for arresting and deporting immigrants falls to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But they only have about 6,000 officers for the whole country.
And so the Trump administration, because it is their goal to sort of deport as many people as possible, they've deputized a sort of unbelievable number of other federal, state, and local agencies.
So they've recruited FBI agents, DEA agents.
They have brought people in from, you know, some secret service across the DHS.
But they've also said, you know, if you're a state or local law enforcement official, we're going to give you arresting authority to help us out.
We haven't actually seen that happen in any kind of large-scale way yet, but we could see, for example, like the state of Texas has the Department of Public Safety.
They have officers all around the state.
And at the border, we could see them carrying out arrests.
We could see, I think the state of Oklahoma even said that they would cooperate to the extent that they would turn over the immigration status of children in their public schools.
So I think we're going to see a sort of unprecedented level of that type of cooperation, particularly in red states and in sort of more red-leaning cities and counties.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
And you've also said that the Trump administration has been trying to increase the number, the number of deportations, apprehensions.
Do we know how many arrests have been made?
unidentified
We've been coming up with a daily tally.
I think it's a little bit over 5,000 or 6,000 at this point.
The important thing I want to emphasize to listeners or to viewers here is that an arrest of an immigrant living here illegally is not like one-to-one with a deportation.
Oftentimes, ICE will arrest someone and then for various reasons they realize they have to release them.
So a really common reason is they'll arrest someone and say, oh my gosh, well, your country is just not taking any deportees right now.
And so there's really no point in us detaining you and we have such limited space.
So we're going to release you.
And you know, you're sort of on bond for now, but we're going to come get you at some point.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
We have callers waiting to talk with you.
We'll start with Steve in Florida, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Steve.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I've got two points.
Number one, we've had open borders for the last 40 years, ever since the 80s when they started working in the construction.
And they've sort of gone through the immigration cycle where they've established themselves and have opened businesses.
And I've worked with a lot of people coming up from the Mexican border, and they're just like everybody else.
The fact that this began with the Biden administration is laughable.
They brought them in originally for the sole purpose of undermining prevailing wage.
And the second point I have is that we need people here to work.
We need people here to build houses.
We need people here to provide long-term care, which the population that we have now of trying to get people to work in these industries is woefully inadequate.
And as a result, we're paying well over $2,000 a month for rent and well over $400,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, thousand-square-foot house.
So I think that these new border policies are the exact opposite of what we need.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Michelle.
unidentified
Thanks so much, Steve.
I think you raise a lot of interesting points, and it's probably impossible to address them all.
I will say, you know, for better or for worse, what has happened over the last four years feels a little different to me in kind.
You know, obviously we have had illegal immigration or whatever you'd like to call it, people coming from Mexico for as long as America has been a country.
You know, in the 1950s, we had a whole program to try to get Mexicans to come legally and work on farms so that they wouldn't cross illegally.
This is an issue that goes back, you know, more than 100 years.
What happened in the last four years that feels different to me, and I won't say it's better or worse, is that typically I think when you think of like a really typical undocumented immigrant, you're thinking of someone who sneaks across the border, goes unnoticed, doesn't have any papers whatsoever, goes and gets a job under the table.
But very recently, what we've seen are a lot more people coming here, asking for asylum, putting themselves in the system, and very quickly getting a government work permit that gives them a social security number and allows them to sort of integrate into the regular economy.
So, you know, I think for those people, it's better in the sense that they're avoiding sort of some of the abuses that come with working under the table.
But it's different in the sense that they've been factored into the economy in a different way.
And I think a lot of people would also say it served as even more of a draw because it really facilitates their lives here.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Let's hear from Michael in Massachusetts, Line for Republican.
Good morning, Michael.
unidentified
Yes.
My question is: the 1.3 million or approximate number of illegals that have been, their case has been adjudicated, why have they not been removed from the country at a faster rate?
Thank you.
Hi, it's a really good question.
And it comes down to, I think, a philosophical debate, Michael, where People with final orders of removal.
First of all, the big answer is that, you know, as I said, we have 6,000 people working in the entire section of ICE that is responsible for arrest and detention and removal.
So that's a very small number of people.
Congress has never really felt inclined to fund a significantly higher number.
And so to some extent, it's been an issue of prioritization.
People have treated it in different ways.
You know, in past administrations, particularly under Obama, they really tried to prioritize deporting as many people as possible through jails.
And so that's how they ended up deporting so many people, actually.
Under Biden, they decided, you know, we don't really want to upend someone's life if they have what the Biden people called sort of mitigating factors.
Let's say if they had U.S. citizen children, if they'd lived here for 20 or 30 years, were married to a U.S. citizen.
Those were the sorts of people where they felt like they didn't really want to put resources into deporting those people.
And so that's sort of a philosophical difference.
I think the other big difference is a lot of these people, you know, we think of them as having their cases were fully adjudicated.
But at the same time, in the meantime, let's say they've married a U.S. citizen, or even they've gotten some kind of job where an employer is able to sponsor them.
And so they, on the one hand, have this order of removal on their case, but they also have a pending green card.
And from administration to administration, it changes whether you try to deport that person in the meantime or not.
You know, Trump is still going after people who have pending green card cases because they have a removal order.
But Biden would say, you know, that's a waste of time.
That person, you know, we're just going to have to bring them back.
So why go after them at all?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
It is not your outlet, but this morning's New York Times has the headline.
And to your earlier point, deportations only work if countries agree to take citizens back.
What countries are looking at seeing a potential increase in these deportation returns?
And what does the current Trump administration's relationship with them look like?
unidentified
Yeah, it's a really good question because this is one of the most complicated issues before the Trump administration.
You know, obviously, the main countries that we deport to, we have a pretty well-oiled machine with them.
So those would be Mexico, Guatemala, to some extent, some countries in South America to Ecuador, to Honduras.
The really big problem is Venezuela.
So we have a huge population of people from Venezuela who are living here illegally, who sort of fled the regime there.
That regime has not been in good relations with Washington for at least the last decade or so and absolutely categorically refuses to take its citizens back.
It's a big problem.
It's a really big problem because especially in the last few years, we aren't just seeing sort of regular Venezuelan refugees, but we've also seen in that flow a relatively small but still significant number of gang members of this new gang called Trende Aragua.
And those people, I mean, I don't want to admit it, like, I don't want to downplay it.
They're genuinely pretty dangerous people.
A lot of them have been arrested and in jail in the U.S.
But we have nowhere to put those people.
I mean, if you have a TREN person, we literally can't deport them even though we want to.
And so either, you know, they have to make the tough decision of holding someone indefinitely in jail and holding a sort of precious detention bed, we have relatively few of those, or to have to release that person.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Let's hear from Diana in New Jersey, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Diana.
unidentified
Hi.
I was wondering if the guests could shed some light on the economic contributions that immigrants, whether they're undocumented or not, make to the country.
For instance, they give $25 billion to Social Security that they never collect.
Also, if they're going to go after the immigrants, they need to go after the employers because I know firsthand as a returning, like a stay-at-home mom to work, without a college degree, I competed with immigrants.
And I became, I worked side by side in some of the richest houses.
I live in Livingston, New Jersey, one of the upscale suburban neighborhoods that have, not all of us are rich.
I live in Livingston, too.
But I became a nanny for rich families.
And employed in their house is nannies, maids, secretaries to help them conduct their life, but they play them all under the table.
Me being an American citizen, I questioned it.
I was told, oh, don't worry about it.
But when tax came, he tried to teach me, treat me like a contractor instead of a W-2 employee, and I spoke up.
He came the next day with $7,000 in cash.
And then I worked two more years for them, and they put me on the books with one of his real estate.
He was a real estate developer like Trump.
And he put me on the books.
And then, of course, the kids got older and I moved on.
But it's just a lot of this goes on.
It's not just illegal immigrants working under the table.
It's Americans.
I had a land chem lawn or one of those guys, a lawn doctor come.
And the guy got Michelle, your response.
Sounds like you have some really interesting experiences.
Yeah, it's a really good question, and it really runs the gamut.
But I think, like, time and again, all the research, all the evidence points to the fact that in the long term, immigrants coming to the country contribute economically to this country, both because often they work and pay, as you said, pay into Social Security.
And if they're undocumented, can't collect what they've put in.
Approximately 50% or more of people who we consider undocumented pay taxes.
Even if they don't have a Social Security number, the IRS has a way for them to pay taxes, which a lot of people feel that they need to do in case they ever have a path to become legal here.
They want to be able to show they've sort of done their part and paid taxes.
But it's much broader than that.
I would say, you know, our country, for better or for worse, has priced these people into being here.
I mean, the example I always give is that, you know, there are people here picking our strawberries.
You know, if they weren't coming and sort of taking those jobs steadily, replacing each other, this is a really exhausting job that a lot of people can't do for very long.
The price of our strawberries might really double because we would just not have anyone to pick them.
And even more broadly than that, if you think about it, you know, you always want the economy to be growing.
You want more people to be coming in because more people are working, but more people are also consuming.
And so that's a pretty basic economic principle, but it's something that economic, that immigration really helps with.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Let's hear from Keith in Palm Bay, Florida, Line for Republicans.
Good morning, Keith.
unidentified
Good morning, ladies.
I hope you're having a great day so far.
One of the biggest disservices, actually, I think that we do to these people are, you were just talking about strawberry pickers.
America has always had migrants that have come in and done the farms and stuff and gone back and back and forth for ages.
But then Reagan promised us that the border would be closed after when he let them all become citizens.
And nobody followed through in our government.
In our government, between our government and workers, we've progressed into this thing where it's migrants, illegal aliens.
And then what we're having now, which I think started in 2019, when all seven Democrats on the podium said they would give free health care to anybody coming.
And I believe they started walking them.
The NGOs helped them through cities.
The cartels helped them through the jungles.
And they're enslaved to the cartels when they get here.
I think we're doing a real disservice to these people.
And then President Biden developed that app.
And now we're getting them from overseas, you know, the African countries, the Middle East, even Europe and stuff, having these people fly in with this app.
And it's gone into a crazy thing.
I believe we really need to just shut down the borders, figure out what we need, because we need many, many people coming into this country.
We don't have enough people to be doing what we need to be doing, manufacturing and being self-service, self-efficient.
So we do need people coming in, but we need to know how many, what kind of work and stuff they need to do.
And we need to have an orderly, non-expensive way of getting into America.
And I really feel sorry for all these people that have waited in line for 10 years and paid the right way.
And they're Americans who are living the American dream.
And I believe that's why you lost a lot of Hispanic vote from the Democrat Party this time.
Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Your response?
unidentified
Yeah, thanks for that perspective.
I totally agree with you that I think this is not how literally anyone would have designed an immigration system.
I mean, it's crazy.
I think the problem is that, you know, you've hit on something really fundamental that a lot of people feel, which is, you know, there's so many people waiting in line.
They're trying to do it the right way.
Why are we allowing people to sort of quote unquote do it the wrong way and rewarding them?
I would say the problem with that is that I'll give you an example.
The line, in order to get in the line, you need to have one of a few things.
You need to have a child or a sibling who is a U.S. citizen.
You need to have a college degree or you need to be applying to college or you need to have an employer who is sponsoring you for a job.
And typically, the sponsorship process is so expensive that it's pretty rare for you not to have a college degree and for an employer to find you and sponsor you.
So there are very, very basically no other avenues into the country if you don't fit into one of those categories.
So you can imagine, you know, you were talking about this.
There are people coming from around the world crossing the border.
I will say it's not actually true that people were registering on an app and flying from countries like Africa.
They had to actually, you know, physically make their way to the border and then use an app.
And the app was sort of designed to say, if you're already here, we're acknowledging you're here and please don't cross illegally.
You know, we'll give you a little bit of a reward if you wait and let us screen you and know who you are and come in semi-legally.
The problem is all those people who are coming to fill jobs, I mean, our economy has basically absorbed all those people into jobs like farm work, you know, home health care, nannying, all sorts of construction, all sorts of industries.
Clearly, we've just absorbed those people right in.
We needed those people to some extent.
But we literally have no legal way for those people to come in and no legal way for companies to say, I actually really need someone.
I'm finding no Americans.
I need more people, and quickly I would like to use a visa to get someone here.
I mean, we just literally, there is no such program that does that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Just about 20 minutes left with our guest, Michelle Hackman, immigration policy reporter with the Wall Street Journal.
We'll go next to Bruce in Palm City, Florida, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bruce.
unidentified
Good morning.
How are you doing?
My question is: we need immigrants, and like the gentleman just spoke before, there's a legal way to do it, and it's been the legal way has been happening for years.
And the influx for the last four years, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, they pile these people in to go to certain sanctuary cities.
And correct me if I'm wrong, isn't Congress, when the census is taken, don't they allow Congress people the amount of Congress per state or sanctuary cities with the amount of people, whether they're voters or not?
That's my question.
Yes, it is true that the way the census works is undocumented people are counted as people for the purposes of the census.
So it does mean that anywhere that they go, they're increasing the population.
And I think we're going to have to wait until 2030 to see how that sort of impacts the way that the map is drawn.
I will say in 2020, this is not like really my area of expertise, but I did find it notable that even though you think of these patterns of migration as being mainly toward places like New York, California, Chicago, that the places that grew the most, I would say, were more the Sunbelt.
So you saw like Texas gain seats.
And I think that's because even though we think of migration as being this sort of huge influx into the country, it's even more significant sort of how population growth works elsewhere and sort of how Americans, I think it's canceling out Americans moving from different parts of the country, especially to the Sunbelt.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Michelle, I wanted to follow up on something you talked about earlier, and that is the lack of space to hold migrants once they are apprehended or detained.
Another headline, you had this week, Trump orders use of Guantanamo Bay to house migrants.
What can you tell us about that?
unidentified
Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up.
Obviously, a pretty controversial decision given the history of Guantanamo Bay, both as a sort of prison for terrorists, but also as a really longtime place that we've held migrants, especially those caught at sea, Haitians and Cubans primarily.
The thinking for the Trump administration is, as I said, you know, right now there are approximately 41,000 beds across all of ICE detention.
That, even under Biden, was pretty tight.
You know, they were trying to move people out as quickly as possible because they wanted to, they had a higher throughput, you know, at any given time.
And they did, even the Biden administration was deporting, you know, 200,000 or so people.
And so they wanted to move people through as quickly as possible.
The Trump people are saying now, if we want to scale up, if we want to deport hundreds of thousands or millions of people, we need a lot more beds.
And so one thing that they've come up with is they figured out they could open a facility at Guantanamo that they think can hold about 30,000 people.
And they think that they can use existing Pentagon contracts to pay for that and stamp that up really quickly.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Let's hear from Marvin in Michigan, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Marvin.
unidentified
Yes, good morning, young ladies.
I just seen on the news last this month of deportations, the Columbia president, he just announced that all Colombians that's working in the United States could come back to Colombia immediately and he have jobs for him.
And all this information that this young lady is giving out to Tony Community and to other immigrants of how they can safeguard theirselves.
Where was all this information brought out before the election process was going on?
And they knew that this couldn't happen to them.
And they voted for the guy anyway.
It is, it's interesting what happened with Colombia.
I think what happened as far as I understand it is that the Colombian president had sort of seen pictures that disgruntled him of another deportation flight where he saw, you know, sort of these deportees shackled.
I think that's sort of relatively standard for ICE to treat their detainees that way.
But the Colombian president, you know, he's a pretty bombastic figure himself.
I think some people even talk about him as like almost like a Trump-like figure in his own country.
And he really likes almost like stunts.
And so he said, I'm not taking any sort of military aircraft to my country.
Of course, then you saw Trump snap back in a really, really comprehensive way and say, I'm going to put sanctions on your country.
I'm going to cancel visas.
I'm going to do tariffs.
And I think what we learned from that experience is, at least for Colombia, dude, that was too much.
They caved.
And what happened this week was Colombia sort of did this stunt where they said, you know, we don't trust the Americans to treat our people well.
So we're going to send our own planes to take our deportees back.
I think this came as a delight to the Trump administration because it's one fewer flight that they have to pay for.
So, you know, it's interesting how this whole episode went down.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Patricia in Texas, Land for Republicans.
Good morning, Patricia.
unidentified
Good morning, C-SPAN.
I just wanted to correct your guest on the number of IS agents we have.
According to the official website, we have, and I quote, more than 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel.
So actually, the number of agents is much larger.
And those facts do matter.
That Ms. Hackman is a journalist.
She should know the correct number.
And also, she stated that they just figured out about the beds in Guantanamo.
They didn't just figure that out.
They've been planning on it for four years.
I have a friend that worked in Guantanamo, so she needs to get her facts straight.
And I appreciate the caller from Florida.
His sentiments were exactly what I agree with.
And MAGA.
Patricia, thank you for looking that up.
I'll explain to you why our numbers are different.
So ICE has 20,000 employees overall.
About 6,000 work in the division that I'm talking about, which is called enforcement and removal operations.
Roughly another 6,000 work in something called Homeland Security Investigations.
So those are closer to like FBI agents.
Those people are not day-to-day arresting immigrants in the country legally.
Those people are investigating migrant smuggling organizations.
They're investigating cartels.
They're even doing things like a really big area for them is looking into child pornography because often that is sort of coming in and out of the country internationally.
And so, and then the rest of ICE, a lot of them are lawyers.
They're prosecutors.
Those are the people who are prosecuting immigrants in the country illegally in immigration court.
And so, yes, ICE is 20,000 people, but practically speaking, those who are available or by job title are responsible for doing arrests and deportation are only about 6,000.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
We'll go to Marcia in Payson, Arizona, line for independence.
Good morning, Marcia.
unidentified
Well, good morning.
People don't realize the effectlessness of our medical system.
People don't let themselves get, I mean, they go to doctors who don't care if they get well.
There are 9 million people on disability, 100,000 added every year that strains Social Security.
When these people, if they went to natural doctors, homeopaths, etc., could actually get well and go to work.
We're just, we're not taking personal responsibility for our health.
And they go to school on disability and they just linger the rest of their lives and big pharma loves it.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
In response for our colour.
unidentified
This is not an area of expertise for me, I will say, but I will say one trend that we've seen that has made it particularly advantageous for immigrants in the country illegally to have available jobs for them is that a lot of jobs that typically would go filled by Americans who typically don't have college degrees or don't have sort of specialized training or skill sets is that a lot of that population has unfortunately become addicted to...
of painkiller type drugs and that's made them less and less able to work.
And so a lot of those jobs that they would or should be taking are instead going to immigrants.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Chris in Alabama, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Chris.
unidentified
Yes, hi.
I have a catch-22 question.
We're deporting Mexicans, rapists, and killers and et cetera, et cetera.
And yet, from what I understand, if you know a killer and you don't report it, you are helping them.
Okay?
So we've released into our country people from January 6th who have been found guilty of these crimes, and they're being allowed to come into this country by a great man, our president.
And yet he's throwing out rapists and killers who they don't necessarily have any proof of them being such.
And certainly I would just like an answer on who is who and why is why.
Thank you very much.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Michelle.
unidentified
You know, I've heard that criticism from a lot of people that we're treating sort of different people who have committed similar crimes differently.
And that's something that I shouldn't share an opinion on because it's a, you know, not something I cover day to day.
But you raise a point that a lot of people share, which is like, you know, we have an American criminal system that handles people.
You know, is it almost like double punishment if you throw someone in jail for 10 years or something, or in prison for 10 years, and then also deport them?
You know, I'm not going to share an opinion either way because if someone's deported, they've been in the country illegally.
So you can decide for yourself if that is fair or not.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Michelle, you've had a busy week.
Want to share another headline that you had.
Trump, so it's fear among migrants with shock and awe deportation campaign.
Talk a little bit about the reaction coming out of migrant communities and those advocacy groups who are supporting them.
unidentified
Yeah, so we wrote this story to highlight the fact that a lot of the people that Trump is sort of highlighting their deportations were people that were being deported under President Biden also.
I mean, Biden really concentrated his ice on serious criminals.
But Trump has sort of cranked up this PR campaign that, frankly, is working pretty well.
He is blasting out video of people being loaded onto deportation planes.
He is sending sort of relatively high-profile people out on deportation operations.
I think probably a lot of viewers saw a picture of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam out sort of on a deportation operation wearing a sort of law enforcement uniform.
They sent Dr. Phil out.
They've sent all sorts of other right-wing personalities out to sort of show how these operations are working.
And what it's done is: A, it's made the operations look sort of different in scale or kind than they used to be, but it's also sown a lot of fear among migrants who feel like, oh my gosh, you know, these arrests are ubiquitous, they're everywhere, they're coming for me next.
And I would say people have really have responded sort of in a rational way, which is that they are too scared to, in some cases, go to work, go to a grocery store.
We've heard reports that sort of public transportation, like subways or buses, are much emptier than they would have been a few weeks ago.
And that's having an impact on the country and the economy already.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Let's hear from Bill in Alabama, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bill.
unidentified
There is no law that you have to return illegals to their country of origin.
Why don't we make a deal with these low-cost countries where the cost of living is extremely low and where the people are desperate for money, pay a billion dollars to Somalia, Sudan, Chad, and just load these planes up with these illegals, take them there, and let them out and let them enjoy the life of those people.
We don't have an obligation to maintain these people who are here illegally.
They chose to make an illegal action, and they can suffer the consequences by going to live, as millions and millions of others do all around the world.
You raise a really interesting point, and that's actually the exact strategy that the Trump administration is now attempting to pursue.
I think the first such deal that we'll probably see is with El Salvador, where El Salvador has a pretty extensive prison system.
And so the Trump administration is concentrated on trying to see if they can send some of those Venezuelan gang members that I was talking about to El Salvador to sort of be in their presence rather than in ours.
Even in that case, I think that the numbers of people that El Salvador is willing to take are not going to be unlimited, and we are going to have to compensate them in some way.
And so it's going to, you know, it's going to take some amount of diplomatic work to keep striking these deals with other countries, but it's certainly something this administration is looking to do.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Let's hear from Ronald in New York, line for independence.
Good morning, Ronald.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm disappointed in the Wall Street Journal in the sense that on this issue and other issues, it's not really taking a position that I would have thought would be correct.
Now, regarding illegal immigrants, they have all committed crime in the sense that to come into this country illegally is a crime in itself.
And during the Eisenhower administration, the United States was able to successfully deport a million illegal immigrants.
Now, either we obey the rules as a country or we do not.
These people all broke the law and the right thing is for them to go back and come in legally.
That's it.
Like Switzerland, for example, they do that.
They won't let in one person who comes in illegally, not one.
Now, you'll say, all right, well, Switzerland's a small country.
That's true, of course.
But either, as I said, either you obey the rules of the country or you don't and then suffer the consequences.
Thank you.
Thanks for that feedback.
You know, my job as a journalist is to inform about sort of what the facts are, but also to share sort of perspectives that people hadn't considered.
And a lot of readers, you know, will read a perspective and are uncomfortable with it and don't like it, but it's our job to sort of make sure that we're representing the views of everybody in the country, of employers, of people who have immigrants moving into their communities, and of the immigrants themselves and their experience working through the system.
I will say to your point about laws, there is a common misconception about sort of what is a crime and what is not a crime.
And so I'll lay it out pretty quickly.
Entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor.
It's not a felony.
In the vast majority of cases, it could be prosecuted.
But the Justice Department under every past administration has decided it's not really something that is worth pursuing.
You know, prosecuting someone for a misdemeanor wouldn't even send them to jail typically.
If people cross the border illegally more than once, that turns into a felony, and that's something that much more often gets prosecuted.
Living in the country illegally is actually not a crime.
It is a civil violation, sort of, you know, same in statute, but obviously not the same in consequences, almost like getting a parking ticket.
And so that's not something that someone can even be sent to criminal jail for.
I will say, you know, that answer makes a lot of people angry because they feel like it should be a crime to live here illegally.
And I'll say that's something, you know, if people feel that way, that's something that Congress could change.
And I think speaks to the fact that our politics have interests in having these people here for economic and other reasons.
And that's why there's been pressure not to change that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
We have time for one last call.
We'll hear from my, I'm sorry, Ralph in Georgia, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Ralph.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
I would just like to say, and I'll try to make this quick.
I know I was in El Paso, Texas after I retired from the military.
There were Mexican people.
They would come across the border, flash a car, they would come over here, go to our schools, come over here and work in our different places, hotels and our agriculture, any type of work, and they were required to go back in at evening and return the next day and see they were picked up and given the work.
What I want to know is we went into all these countries that they are talking about.
And since I will say this quickly, are those people that were flown to Chicago, New York, from Texas and from Florida?
Were they vetted to see what their activities were before they were flown into these countries?
And I'll just leave it at that because people in Iowa are begging for these immigrants to come over and work to help with the fall.
Thank you.
I'll take your answer.
You speak to the continued brokenness of the system.
And as I always say, this is a system that is sort of not remotely operational and is the consequence of 40 years of not sort of fixing this immigration system and coming up with something new that actually functions because no one would design it this way.
I mean, you have employers all over the country who want workers, want to be able to hire people legally in most cases, I shouldn't say in all cases, who would be willing to go through a visa process if that existed.
It doesn't in most cases, especially for sort of these lower income types of jobs like construction or working in a nursing home or something.
And so what you have is sort of this like rough shot system where immigrants are crossing the border often illegally.
They're often asking for asylum and then they're choosing themselves where to go in the country.
Or, you know, as you alluded to, Texas was busing people to different cities, which a lot of people, if they didn't have a sort of destination already in mind, were taking them up on.
And so you had lots of people showing up in places like New York, Chicago, Denver that were being sent there by Texas, but there was no coordination whatsoever between sort of Texas, the federal government, those places to say, where are these people actually needed and wanted?
Where are their jobs for them?
Because there just basically is no mechanism in place to do that because that's, you know, the system, this is all sort of not how the system is supposed to work to begin with.
And so there's no way to try to coordinate in that sense.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼
Our guest, Michelle Hackman, immigration policy reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
You can find her work online at WSJ.com.
Michelle, thank you so much for being with us today.
unidentified
Thank you.
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