At the six-month mark of the second Trump administration, we want to know how you're feeling about the president's signature campaign issue.
When it comes to President Trump's immigration and deportation policies, do you think they've been too strict, not strict enough, or about right?
Phone lines for each of those answers.
If you say too strict, it's 202-748-8000.
If you say not strict enough, it's 202-748-8001.
If you say it's about right, 202-748-8002.
You can also send us a text.
That number, 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media.
On X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
On Facebook, it's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Sunday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
It's a bit of a Goldilocks question this morning asking whether you think it's not strict enough, too strict, or about right.
So go ahead and start calling in as we show you some of the polling on this issue.
A recent poll from the Pew Research Center notes that as the Trump administration stepped up immigration enforcement around the country, Americans are offering mixed to negative views of some of their most high-profile actions.
For example, they write, public opinion is split over the use of state and local law enforcement in deportation efforts.
50% approve, 49% disapprove, but several other actions far less popular.
60% of Americans disapprove of the suspension of most asylum applications.
59% disapprove of ending temporary protective status for many immigrants who came to the United States to escape war or other disasters.
54% disapprove of increasing immigration and customs enforcement raids on workplaces where people who are in the U.S. illegally may be working.
Some of the numbers from a recent Pew Research Center report.
Last week at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing that California Senator Alex Padilla was talking about the Trump administration's immigration enforcement and deportation actions.
They're going after farmers and farm workers, students and families and business owners, many of whom, other than being undocumented, do not have any violent criminal record.
And men who have been living here, contributing to the success of their communities and the country for years and years, if not decades.
So, none of what we're seeing happening around the country, or very little, is actually targeting criminals.
unidentified
And I'm not asking you to take my word for it.
It shouldn't be hard, but it is hard for some to take my word for it.
The people being targeted are often the people who are harvesting our fruit and vegetables, who work in meat packing plants or in the service industry.
The very same group of people who, just a few years ago, at the outset of the COVID pandemic, Donald Trump declared essential.
And the fact of the matter is, Donald Trump has simply gone too far, and the public is starting to turn against him.
Again, he'll be there at the beginning of this coming week.
We'll certainly talk about that visit on the Washington Journal in the days to come.
Asking you this Sunday morning, though, simply your view of the Trump administration's immigration and deportation policies.
Do you think they're too strict, not strict enough, or about right?
Jim at Lake Gaston on X writes in asking if we're asking about folks who are here legally seeking citizenship, or asking about the folks who igalegally jumped the border, saying, I have strikingly different views.
Happy to talk about both those things, Jim, if you want to call in.
It's 202-748-8000 if you think the Trump administration's immigration and deportation policies are too strict.
202-748-8001 if you think they're not strict enough.
202-748-8002 if you think it's about right.
Melvin is up first in Richmond, Virginia.
Good morning, Melvin.
What do you think?
unidentified
Good morning, John.
Thank you for taking my call.
John, I truly believe that the Republican Party basically is a racist party.
When you look at history, who was against civil rights?
It's another way for America, the American Republic Party, to be racist.
And they know it.
But America, if you really want to talk about what the real economic problem is, and of course, you know, that's what the Republicans are going to tell you, is, oh, that the immigrants are stealing all this money.
You know, the people who really affect Americans' pockets more than immigrants are the rich.
Now, yes, maybe it might cost us $5 per person to put an illegal immigrant on Medicare, but the rich steal $1,000.
So would you rather be against the person who steals $5, or would you be against the person who stole $1,000 from?
Yes, I would say going just about right with obviously a few mistakes here and there, and there are going to be some things that go a little too far occasionally, but that's true of everything that's going on.
Probably detaining someone without papers who maybe when they're rounding up, if they raid a place of employment and guilt by association, I think, and then they release them after being detained a short time.
I'm sure that that's going to happen with every institution, but that's what gets publicity.
So he's acknowledging that they are violating the law by being here.
And there's one other point I'd like to make, and that's when they talk about the essential work that they do, and of course they'll say Americans won't do it.
And that is largely due to the low pay they receive due to being under the table type of payments.
unidentified
But the thing is, there's a long waiting list to get in.
And the people who have jumped the line, and everyone can understand people jumping lines ahead of them.
Brian, why do you think we need to go so far as to shoot people coming into the country?
unidentified
Because other countries do it and they keep their immigration way down.
Another thing they can do, besides when an employer hires an illegal, number one, not only should they fine them, they should imprison them for doing it.
You have to get really tough to solve this problem.
And another thing that my Democratic colleagues keep saying, oh, they're violating their due process rights, these people have very limited due process rights, and you could also process them like a military combatant, putting them in a military tribunal, finding them guilty, and then shooting them the hell out of the country.
Us American people, we are sick and tired of having our tax dollars go to federal programs, state programs for housing for illegals who don't pay taxes into the system.
Enough is enough.
I mean, Trump's doing a good job, in my opinion, but I think they could go a lot further and solve this problem.
I am sort of the opposite of the guy who was just on from Massachusetts there.
I think that the treatment of these people is inhumane.
People were just trying to make a living, fleeing persecution, seeing what governments are there now, put people in shackles, put them in what looks to me to be almost concentration camps.
You can blame President Trump, but it's not all his fault.
It's the Congress' fault.
They've been working and have been not working on immigration for years.
The system needs to be reformed so that we can get people in our country to work.
I mean, I look at immigrants that I know, that I've worked with in various places.
Immigrants come to this country willing to work, sacrifice.
They're leaving their whole past behind them to leave a country, come across the whole world for an opportunity, and we shouldn't put them in shackles and ship them on some plane with destination unknown.
Robert, you might be interested in this story, a front page story above the fold this morning in the New York Times, the headline, it's a wipeout, the aftershocks of an ice workplace raid.
Here's just some of the story.
It's about Glen Valley Foods in Omaha.
For more than a decade, Glenn Valley's production reports had told a story of steady ascendance, new hires, new manufacturing lines, new sales records for one of the fastest growing meat packing companies in the Midwest.
But in a matter of weeks, production had plummeted by almost 70%.
Most of the workforce was gone.
Half the maintenance crew was in the process of being deported.
The director of human resources had stopped coming to work, and more than 50 employees were being held at a detention facility nearby in rural Nebraska.
It had been almost three weeks since dozens of federal agents arrived at the factory's door with a battering ram and a warrant for 107 workers who they said were undocumented immigrants using false identification, part of a wave of workplace raids carried out by the Trump administration over the course of this summer.
If you want to read more about Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, again, that's the front page of today's New York Times.
This is John in Santa Paula, California.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, and thanks for taking my calls.
My 30-day calls.
I hope you hear me.
The Republicans have always been anti-slavers.
In the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president who was anti-slave.
In the 60s, the Republicans went into the South and won representation and changed the South from the Jim Crow laws away from the Democrats, the Dixiecrats.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, but he lost the support of the Democrats and didn't go for a second term.
So the Democrats have always been in favor of slavery.
Jim, do you think we should increase legal immigration?
Do you think that million a year number is about right?
unidentified
I think so.
If your system can handle it, you know, really, all this illegal stuff that Biden and them was doing, you're actually, you're hurting legal immigrants.
I mean, they come over here and did it the right way.
Like I say, they busted their tail.
And, you know, and they're going to get, and you was actually, Biden and them was giving the illegals one that hadn't done it nothing.
He was giving them Medicaid and all these benefits, you know, and they hadn't done nothing to earn it.
And the ones that come over here legal and did it the right way, you know, they're getting shafted.
Before you go, I want to get your reaction to to these numbers.
It's from a recent CBS News poll.
It's about changing views on the Trump administration's deportation efforts.
Going back to February, a month into the second Trump administration, 59% of respondents saying that they approve of the Trump administration's efforts to deport illegal immigrants.
41% disapproved.
You can see those numbers changing in June down to 54% approving.
Now, the most recent poll that came out July 16th and 18th is when it was in the field.
Just 49% saying they approve of the Trump administration's program to deport immigrants illegally in the United States.
51% saying they disapprove.
Those are some of the numbers over time.
We lost the color, but interested in other folks' reaction as well.
This is Robert in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I say that it's not strict enough.
70% of them aren't vetted, weren't vetted, so we don't know who the criminals are and who the criminals aren't.
And if they give them asylum, you can be hiring somebody in a nursing home or a hospital or a daycare that has no background check at all.
This was Tuesday last week, a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing.
The headline was Biden's Border Betrayal.
It included testimony from a South Texas mother whose son, a former Marine and Border Patrol agent, was fatally shot by two illegal immigrants in 2014.
This is some of her story.
unidentified
The two illegals jumped out of the stolen vehicle they were driving, and without hesitation or a warning, they began shooting at us, even at us without even asking us to hand over the keys.
In the process, Harvey was shot in the chest.
My husband, Javier, was shot in the back, and they continued shooting at the rest of us, which included me, my daughter-in-law, two grandsons, and their friend.
When I heard the yelling coming from the illegals while they shot at us, I fell back off the chair that I was sitting on, and I struggled to get up, but instead had to crawl to my son, who had tried to pick up an AR, which he had left leaning by the truck to defend us.
Do you know what it is like to see your son go down after being shot?
Do you know what it is like to hear the gunshots, bullets whizzing past you?
Do you know what it's like when your mind is trying to process everything, telling your grandchildren to duck while thinking your son is on the ground with a bullet in his chest?
Do you know what it's like to hear your son's last words to his father?
Keep shooting, dad.
Keep shooting were his last words.
That should never have happened.
Illegally aliens have impacted American lives in a very negative way.
They have no regard for human life, as I witnessed firsthand.
The illegals that killed Harvey also shot my husband in the back and shot at innocent children and women.
My grandbabies and their friend were only 8 and 11 years old.
Take a moment and imagine your child or grandchild witnessing this horror, this horror.
How does that make you feel?
Would you be okay with this?
Had our immigration laws been enforced, our son would be here.
Barack Obama failed me, my family, and our community and our nation.
If you want to watch it in its entirety, it's available on our website at c-span.org.
Back to your phone calls asking you simply your view of the Trump administration's immigration and deportation policy six months into the second Trump administration.
If you think it's too strict, 202748-8000.
If you think it's not strict enough, 202-748-8001.
And if you think it's about right, 202-748-8002.
As we said, a bit of a Goldilocks question in this first hour of the Washington Journal.
We're about a half an hour in.
This is John in Syracuse.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
It's such a complex problem that we're in, and I just listened to that mom who lost her son.
The majority of mass shootings and killings in the United States are done by white American citizens, starting in Oklahoma with Nelson and McVay blowing up the federal building, starting with the shooter in Las Vegas with his AR-15, which he turned into a fully automatic and killed 52 people and wounded 115.
All of these, you know, Sandy Hook, Florida, Buffalo, New York, these were done by white U.S. citizens.
unidentified
So, you know, making the immigrants out to be all murderers is absurd.
John, you say we need to find a path to citizenship for the people who are here.
There are folks who will hear that and hear in that amnesty.
And in that, we'll say, if we give amnesty, then that only encourages a whole other generation of illegal immigrants to come in and wait for the next round of amnesty.
What would you say to somebody who thinks that?
unidentified
Well, I mean, I agree with the secure border.
I don't disagree with this border policy right now of keeping the borders secure.
But it's going to take a lot of money to deport 11 million people.
unidentified
There are some people here.
There are immigrants here that they're just trying to make it.
And if you look at it, if that's the case then, then you would go to corporate America and say to them, well, if we find out that you have illegal immigrants here, then you're going to pay a million-dollar fine every day.
So then that's going to curtail it.
But here's the other issue.
The other issue is the lazy American, who's not going to bend down and backbreaking work and pick those strawberries, not going to do it.
They're just not going to do it because, first of all, they don't pay any money.
I mean, basically, some states don't even know what their minimum wage is anymore, but they're not going to do it.
And that's the issue.
The issue is if there's no work here for them, they probably won't even come.
But They know that the lazy American is not going to do that.
Not going to pick those strawberries, not going to pick those grapes, not going to do any of that work.
They're just not going to do it.
And again, it's a complex situation.
This party blaming the Republicans blaming the Democrats.
The Democrats are blaming the Republicans.
Barack Obama, he actually deported an awful lot of people.
So I just think that to save a lot of time, to save a lot of money, to save a lot of heartache, give them a path to citizenship, deport the ones that are bad and keep the border closed, and go after these corporations that if you want to try to stop it, then you have to go after the corporations that are hiring them and just say you're going to pay a fine if we catch them that you're hiring these people.
Jobs Or Convictions00:07:09
unidentified
I mean, that, I mean, you can quit blaming parties and we're at each other's throats and making them out to be massive murderers.
Here's a few of your comments via social media on Facebook.
Kevin writes in that when it comes to the Trump administration's immigration and deportation policies, it's a good beginning.
This is Jason saying it's about right and necessary task after four years of reckless left-wing open border policy.
And saying the way the policies are being implemented right now are beyond criminal.
And Vicki saying when I was a teenager, jobs in meatpacking were great jobs to have.
Lots of people could raise their families on that wage.
If you are hiring illegals, you deserve to lose your business.
In reference to that New York Times story about a meat packing plant in Omaha and the impacts of an ICE raid on the workplace, you can read that story at the New York Times website, and you can call in this morning on phone lines split this way if you think they're too strict, not strict enough, or about right.
As we said, it's a bit of a Goldilocks question.
This is Sandra in Jackson, New Jersey.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
I have to say, John from New York really stressed what I was going to say.
I agree with him totally.
I think it's more supply and demand.
I think people, if there weren't jobs here, they wouldn't be coming.
So I think the problem is they're not doing anything with the employer.
The employers are the one hiring them.
They're the ones that are hiring at a lower rate.
I don't understand why so much, I mean, immigrants should be here legally, but we don't give them the way to come here legally.
We're not hiring judges to hear their case.
I just feel there's too much emphasis on the immigrant.
Why isn't there enough emphasis on the people that are hiring them that aren't giving them a fair wage?
That so-called taking jobs away from America.
And I think if they weren't there, if they weren't being hired, they wouldn't be here illegally.
Yes, I'm looking at the creation of this immigration problem around the planet, and a lot of it has to do with foreign policy.
And I think when you embargo and sanction and take off market and then think back to Ollie North, a trade in machine guns for cocaine in South America, disrupting those people's lives and creating chaos, you're going to have an immigration problem.
So I look at our foreign policy, going clear back to Reagan when he was the president of the actors union, and he was a Democrat.
And then when he became president, he was a union buster, and that created no oversight, no accountability, no transparency, and the corruption we have today.
I don't think we're being strict enough, and there's a lot to unpack here.
I'd like to discuss the recent riots going on in L.A., and I find it baffling that people are waving the flag of the country that they don't want to be sent to.
I also think there's a lot of misconceptions out there as to how the ICE ratings are going down.
I've heard lots from people about normal people just randomly having their doors busted down.
And what people don't understand is that they're going, for the most part, for illegals that have already been convicted of crimes.
Not just slap-on-the-risk type of crimes, but actual violent crimes, such as murder or sexual assault.
People say that they come here because it's safer, which is completely understandable.
But if our border is open, what's going to keep the reason why they want to come here in the first place out of the U.S.?
I was not a Trump supporter, but I seriously think that Biden reversed a lot of the crucial things that Trump did in his previous presidency to keep our borders closed.
I myself am an immigrant.
I have an amino immigration.
And I believe that they should be here in a legal manner, though.
A problem is they don't have the means of doing it.
And the solution should not be for them to be here illegally, but it indeed should be a punishable offense.
But at the same time, they need a safer place.
But on the other hand, it's still a huge concern for public safety, letting whoever wants to come here.
I'll shoot all over your you talk about ICE raids.
The New York Times story that we referenced, it's the above the fold on the Sunday New York Times today.
They interview Gary Rohrer, who's 84 years old, the owner of the meatpacking company, Glen Valley Foods in Omaha.
Just a little bit more from that story.
Rohrer, age 84, had always used a federal online system called e-Verify to check whether his employers were eligible to work.
And Glen Valley Foods itself had not been accused of any violations.
Rohr was a registered Republican in a conservative state, but he voted for a Democrat for the first time in 2024, in part because of Trump's treatment of immigrants.
Rohrer couldn't square the government's accusations of criminal dishonesty with the employees that he'd known for decades as salts of the earth, incredible people who helped build this company.
Most of them had no criminal history aside from a handful of traffic violations.
Many were working mothers, and now they were calling his office from detention asking for legal advice.
Their children, U.S. citizens, were struggling at home and in some cases subsisting on donations of the company's frozen steak.
I'm still furious about what happened to our people.
But we have to keep the machines running, Rohrer said in an interview.
We need more people trained.
We need to be ready to go.
Trained by who, another manager asked.
We lost every supervisor out there.
If you ran a machine or checked temperatures or did anything important, you're gone.
The story goes on from there.
If you want to read more of it, it's in today's New York Times.
Ricardo is in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Well, I was born here in the United States in Newark, New Jersey.
I live now in Eastern Pennsylvania.
My father, who was born in 1956, came to America in 1974.
And my mother was born in Guatemala.
And she came in 1968.
Well, she was born in 1948, came in 68.
Both of them became citizens in the 80s.
And that's when they got married and had me.
And I have many moments when I get upset about a lot of what I consider to be anti-immigration rhetoric that I'll hear on cable news by pundits or by President Trump and that and other people of that sort.
Legal Immigrants Deported00:04:33
unidentified
They came here legally.
They did everything that they needed to do.
They filled out their paperwork.
They took the classes, paid the fees and took the oath and all that sort of thing.
And, you know, none of us are okay with illegal immigration.
And we are, of course, especially not okay with anybody who commits crimes.
I mean, when they was coming across the border, I heard, I don't know if somebody asked them, would they come here to go to work?
And they said no.
And I don't think that the American people ought to be paying our tax money to keep all these people up.
And I agree with people that comes here that's been here and works and they pay taxes just like we do and everything.
They should be able to stay.
And another thing, they should get rid of the ones that's killing and sex trapping and all that, kids and all.
Trump's done a good Republicans has been doing a good job.
It's the Democrats is all for all of this.
That's all they do.
They're the ones that should be locked up, not the Republicans, but they stay on this man from the time he come into office and steal on him.
But you know what comes around goes around sooner or later.
They just started coming around, like Rock Obama and all this other stuff.
And some these immigrants, if they do something to one of y'all family members, maybe y'all will change y'all's mind when they kill somebody in your family or rape them.
The headline, ICE is now richer than most of the world's militaries, thanks to Donald Trump's new funding, noting that through the president's signature domestic policy, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE's annual budget is expected to increase from $8.7 billion to approximately $27.7 billion, with $75 billion allocated for the agency over the next four years.
The annual funding bump is an unprecedented amount for ICE, they write.
It surpasses the annual military budgets of Iran, Turkey, Spain, Mexico, and also at least 23 countries in the top 40 of military spenders.
So, Michael, what are your thoughts on this question?
unidentified
The question, real simple.
These aren't Trump's policies, they're not immigration policies.
They're white supremacist policies.
And the truth is, his focus is on people of color and that and that only.
They're really not immigration policies.
If he's interested in illegal immigration, he will specifically go into very specific places.
Boston, where there are thousands of illegal Irish people.
I was born and raised in Boston.
I understand the city.
Go to New York.
I could show you where all the illegal Russian immigrants live.
Nobody's going after them.
None.
I could show you where the Polish community has many, many illegal immigrants further north in the United States of America.
No, we're only targeting brown ones.
And if you've got a tattoo, there's not a chance.
And let me point this one thing out to you.
I don't want to take up a lot of time.
I'm a dark-skinned individual, born and raised in America, born and raised in Boston, lived in New York.
I live in Connecticut now.
I've been called a dangerous illegal alien on vacation in Florida, right here in my own hometown.
I have people who won't even look at me or talk to me because they think, and I know what they think because I might hear it through someone else.
But I just want to leave you with this final thought.
We have someone in our neighborhood driving around in a fake army vehicle, and it's clear what he's trying to do with the giant flags and trying to intimidate certain people.
I brought it to the attention of police officers, one police officer in particular.
And when I brought it to him, he asked me what I was worried about.
And I said, listen, I'm not really worried, but I think it's clear what he's trying to do.
And you ought to just keep an eye on this person.
And he says, he says, well, you think he thinks you're illegal?
I said, I don't know what he thinks.
He says, because you don't look illegal to me, you look Italian.
And I pointed out to him, what does an illegal person look like?
Can I be Italian and be illegal?
Can I be Irish and be illegal?
Do I have to be brown-skinned and look Mexican to be illegal?
And I realized in that moment he represents so much of America, which is okay with white supremacist attitudes.
First of all, Louis, wow, that guy before head is typical of the problem of why what Trump is doing now is about right.
But guys like him are the reason that it gets so hard because he sees racism everywhere and white supremacy and all this other kind of stuff.
And they use that as a Trump card to get rid of rational discussion.
I mean, it's appalling.
It's really disgusting.
And it is racism for him, guys like him, to constantly say white supremacy, white supremacy, white supremacy.
See, if 90% of the people happen to not be white, and you're focusing on 90%, that's not racist.
Anyway, the point I was going to make is that part of the problem here is that the liberals and the Democrats' own policies are making this a lot harder and causing a lot more pain and suffering than needs to because of the fact that they won't have cooperation with local law enforcement to ICE.
So what's I supposed to do?
If places like California, New York aren't telling where the criminal, where the other criminal, high criminal illegal immigrants are, they won't tell them the court records.
They won't tell them where they are.
So of course, you're going to have to go to places that sweep and you might sweep up some people that you wouldn't have focused on before, but they're still illegal.
You're not going to, if you're going after a murderer or a rapist or something, and you go to a place and you find five other illegal immigrants who maybe didn't commit a crime other than being here illegally, yeah, you're going to sweep them up.
So all of this, you know, clutching our pearls about how horrible this is, that these people are being fucked up.
Where are these Democrats and where are these people crying white supremacy at all these phony issues?
It just makes me so angry every time somebody yells white supremacy and they think that's a truck card.
But why not stop the sanctuary city policies, everything like that?
That would the Trump administrator wants to focus on the extremely dangerous people, but they're quite often left with no choice because, like I said, sanctuary city of the sanctuary state places won't let them do it or won't make or make it very hard to do it and then the final thing is question question what you what you brought up though
So is being here illegal, just being here illegally and not having any other sort of criminal record, should that be enough for you to be swept up and kicked out of this country?
unidentified
Yes.
Now, maybe it won't shouldn't be the focus.
It shouldn't be the focus.
But what are you going to do?
Just let somebody go.
Oh, you're here illegally?
Well, you didn't commit a rape, so you can stay.
Now, maybe it shouldn't be the focus, but I'll tell you one thing: if the sanctuary city, if people would cooperate with ICE and tell them where the hardened criminals are, you would get less, in their view, they're innocent people.
Nobody's innocent.
I mean, they're here illegally.
But, yeah, you're not going to just let them go.
That would be – what kind of logic is that?
Just to say, oh, well, you didn't rape anybody, so you can stay here.
You know, you're here illegally.
That's against the law itself.
You know, that's so, I mean, it's, you know, and then final point on this guy who says, oh, who's going to pick our strawberries?
Who's going to do it?
Who's going to clean our restrooms and things like that?
That's just so.
Again, that is an unbelievably demeaning and racist and elitist point of view by basically saying, oh, well, these people are good enough.
And I do say these people because I honestly think they're leftists.
This guy before had talked about racism.
The left is astonishingly racist on this.
They think, oh, well, these illegal immigrants, they can do all this horrible work because it's not good enough work for Americans.
There's not people here going to do it.
How to solve that problem?
Make people work for their benefits.
If you pull a Medicaid and pull food stamps away from people, if they're not going to work, and then people probably work.
And yeah, wages will have to go up a little bit.
That's fine.
That's fine.
So, you know, all of this talk about how racist this stuff is, that is unbelievably racist in itself.
I do, you know, if I can do little odds and ends on the side to make a little bit, I mean, I'm making less now than I made in 1985.
That's how sad this is.
I mean, you got, I mean, big companies, D.R. Horton Manufacturing, them, they're paying chunk change.
And, I mean, I get a lot of work after the Mexicans are done because the work is crappy and they're building a house in four days when the house should be at least, you know, a week to two weeks, you know, in framing.
I mean, this is ridiculous how things are getting done.
And the rich man is getting richer.
I mean, seriously, Richard, I mean, it was a man, if he ain't making at least $800 a week today, he needs food stamps.
I mean, I just, my first time I applied for insurance from my personal health insurance, I got a $9,200 deductible.
I mean, I'm not even making $2,000 a month now because of this.
I went from a man making $100,000 a year to a man barely making maybe, if I'm lucky, $30,000 a year.
That's being lucky, and that's working seven days a week.
That's Don in New Mexico to your first point about Afghan interpreters.
This is a story from Scripps News within the past week.
Afghan interpreter in U.S. legally detained by ICE at routine green card appointment.
Zia S, a 35-year-old husband and father of five who came to the U.S. legally, was arrested by massed ICE agents following a routine biometrics appointment for his green card.
Excuse me.
Time for one more call.
Let me get in, Steve from Freeland, Maryland.
unidentified
Good morning.
Another federal, state, and local government jobs program.
Illegal immigration has been going on for 40 years.
I'm 61 years old.
Where's the legislative branch?
Where they always are on vacation.
America does not solve problems anymore.
We're not a nation that can solve problems.
We are a nation of talkers, though.
We'll talk points to death with different viewpoints and different things, but solve a problem.
Plenty More to Talk About00:03:01
unidentified
That's something we don't do in this country, is solve problems.
In a word, Evan Osnos' latest book focuses on the subject of money.
His book is titled The Haves and the Have Yachts, Dispatches on the Ultra Rich.
There are 10 essays which originally appeared in his home publication, The New Yorker.
The oldest one, Survival of the Richest, ran in 2017.
The newest, titled Land of Make-Believe, was published in 2024.
In his introduction, Evan Osnos writes that, quote, reporting in the enclaves of the very rich, Monte Carlo, Palm Beach, Palo Alto, and Hollywood is complicated.
It's not a world that relishes scrutiny.
unidentified
Author Evan Osnos with his book, The Haves and the Have Yachts, Dispatches on the Ultra Rich, on this episode of BookNotes Plus, with our host, Brian Lamb.
Book Notes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Honor the person who first showed you democracy in action and ignite America 250, C-SPAN's 18-month ad-free celebration of our nation's story.
Give $25 or more by August 31st at c-span.org slash donate and add your democracy hero to our online wall to keep these vital stories alive for viewers and learners everywhere.
As our thanks, you'll receive an exclusive democracy unfiltered decal.
Your gift helps make C-SPAN possible.
Visit c-span.org slash donate today and join us in keeping America's story alive.
Thank you.
C-SPANShop.org is C-SPAN's online store.
Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories.
There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations.