C-SPAN’s Public Affairs Events examines the Trump administration’s 2025 habeas petition surge—20,659 filings—after expanding mandatory detention for all unlawful immigrants, regardless of border proximity. Courts mostly grant releases, but the Fifth Circuit upheld stricter rules, while detainees from Venezuela, Iran, or Cuba face transfers to third countries like Panama’s Secot prison. Callers clash: Democrats demand due process, Republicans push deportations, citing crimes like Kayla Hamilton’s murder and Virginia’s sanctuary policies. Perla Treviso highlights labor exploitation debates and legal pathways’ collapse under Trump’s policies, framing the crisis as a failure of bipartisan reform amid deep polarization. [Automatically generated summary]
Utah and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma will talk about finding common ground and solving important problems through civil conversation.
Watch live at 5 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
We have to listen so we can govern better.
Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
You can fight and still be friendly.
Bridging the divide in American politics.
You know, you may not agree with the Democrat on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Kins and I are actually friends.
He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
We all don't hate each other.
You two actually kind of like each other.
These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
He owes my son $10 from a bed for a year.
It is never paid.
Don't fork it over.
That's fighting words right there.
I'm glad I'm not in charge of it.
I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
Ceasefire Friday nights on C-SPAN.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We're joined now by Perla Treviso.
She is a reporter at the Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative of ProPublica.
Perla, welcome to the program.
Hi, thank you for having me.
So you and your team have been tracking a new wave of habeas petitions filed by immigrants.
Can you first tell us what that means?
What's a habeas petition?
Yeah, so it's basically a court filing in federal court, either by the immigrant himself or their attorney, basically alleging that their detention is illegal, that it's unlawful, that either they're being detained too long or they shouldn't have been detained by immigration officers in the first place.
Now, if a person is here illegally, do they still have those protections of U.S. law?
They do.
For instance, we've have cases where people have been detained more than six months, and there's usually around the limit.
Of course, there's exceptions, but generally about six months.
And they can allege, you know, I haven't even had a bond hearing.
Or there's a case, for instance, of an Afghani who had worked for a construction company that did contract work for the U.S. military and had been in the country or people with temporary sort of status that is not legal permanent status that can file a habeas petition.
And so you have a ProPublica has a tracker of habeas cases.
It's since January of 2025, there's been 20,659 petitions filed, and then you've got a chart here comparing the different administrations going back to the Obama administration, including the first Trump administration.
There's a dramatic increase.
You can see it visually here.
Can you explain why that's happening?
Yeah, and you know, just quickly based on the last question, habeas are not just used for immigration detention, and our numbers are focusing specifically related to immigration detention and people challenging those.
But habeas can also be used for people being detained in other settings.
But yes, the numbers basically you see that big spike because under the second Trump administration in particular, there's been moves from executive orders to, you know, what legal experts say are different interpretations of the law that basically call for the detention of everyone who entered the country unlawfully.
So before the way that it had been interpreted is that if you recently entered, you know, crossed the border, were caught within a certain distance of the border within a certain timeframe, I think about two weeks, that you were subject to mandatory detention.
But let's say you had crossed five years ago and you were detained five years later somewhere in the interior in Chicago, that you were not considered an arriving alien, for instance, and therefore you were not subject to mandatory detention.
Under the new interpretation under the Trump administration, they're saying that anyone, regardless of how long they've been in the U.S., if you did not enter with a visa or some sort of lawful status, you are subject to mandatory detention.
So that has really led to contributed to the increase of habeas that we're seeing.
And is that policy itself under a legal question?
Are there cases that are looking at that or is that going or is that standing, that new policy?
No, so we've seen the gamut, right?
So I think in individual judges across the country overwhelming, the majority of them are siding with the immigrants in these cases and saying, either granting bond hearings or basically asking the immigration judge to grant them upon hearing or they're released depending on the request.
But we also have pending cases in different circuit courts.
And recently, just a couple of weeks ago or last Friday, the Fifth Circuit was the first one to issue a ruling.
And the Fifth Circuit, which is considered among the more conservative, actually sided with the administration on the bond hearing question, saying that basically it doesn't matter if you had already been in the U.S. for a period of time, you could be subject to mandatory detention.
So I think it would still to be seen what the impact of that is.
We were told that it certainly limits, especially for people detained in states that fall under the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas, where I am.
It definitely makes it harder, but it doesn't end it altogether.
And I think all of the legal experts we talked to think that this is probably going to end up at the Supreme Court.
And here's the headline of what you were talking about.
This is the Associated Press Appeals Court affirms Trump policy of jailing immigrants without bond.
Talk a little bit more about that as far as not having the possibility of bond.
I understand that that was typically reserved for violent criminals or for people with the fear of them fleeing, I guess, or not showing up.
Can you talk a little bit more about why that option was taken away?
Yeah, so I think, you know, as you said, someone would go before an immigration judge and that judge would decide, is this person a security risk?
Is it a flight risk?
And if they felt that that person did not meet that criteria, they would issue a bond for them to continue their immigration case process outside.
I think the administration, especially since coming back into office, the emphasis has been that a lot of people have been, that should have been detained, were not detained.
So for instance, they're saying that they're ending the catch and release under the Biden administration, where people would tend to cross the border generally, would be given a notice to appear before immigration officials at a later point and continue their case.
They would say that a lot of them were not showing up to the court.
I think There are others who dispute that statement, but essentially, you know, they're saying that people should be detained as they go through their process because if they do not qualify for some sort of relief, like asylum, they should then be deported back to their home countries.
And it's a lot easier to do so when someone is detained.
If you'd like to join our conversation about immigration detention, if you've got a question for our guest, you can start calling in now.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
Perla, what can you tell us about the type of migrants that are being detained?
So, you know, since, again, apprehensions, which means arrests at the border, had started to decline in the last few months of President Biden as they had limited requesting asylum at the border.
And you continue to see a very steep decline under the Trump administration.
And so, as you see less detentions of people crossing the border because you have less people crossing, you're starting to see an increase of detentions of people from the interior of the country.
So, we're seeing people who have been in the U.S., generally speaking, for longer periods of time.
I've been in court where there's been people who have been in the U.S. 15, 20 years and have not been able to adjust their status.
Internal government data and independent analysis of publicly available data all show that you're seeing a decrease of people with convictions or violent crimes.
We've seen that in groups of people that we've analyzed as well, including those from the Chicago raid or those who were sent to the Sekot prison in El Salvador, the Venezuelans.
So, generally speaking, you're seeing either people with more ties in the U.S., people with fewer, you know, fewer people with violent crimes or convictions, more, you know, whose crime is basically immigration violations.
And this is CBS News that says less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump's first year back in office had violent criminal records.
Documents show.
Is anybody that is detained by ICE end up in detention?
Anybody arrested by ICE end up in a detention facility, or how does that work?
Or are they deported immediately?
Yeah, generally speaking, what we're seeing depends greatly by the nationality.
So, if you're a Mexican national, for example, detained here in El Paso, the odds are that within hours or a couple of days, you might be sent back, walk back across the border.
If you come from countries such as Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, countries that have generally not taken their nationals back, which had been a challenge for previous administrations as well, there are different answers for that.
I think under the Trump administration, you have seen flights to some of these countries which you hadn't seen before, but it's still limited.
So, you have what they're called third country removals, and that means agreements that the U.S. government is making with other countries to take people from other nationalities that they can't send back to their country.
For example, if you're Cuban, you might be sent to Mexico.
I know recently a Venezuelan who was ordered removed and he accepted his removal to Mexico because he couldn't immediately be sent to Venezuela.
You had immigrants who were sent to Panama, to Costa Rica.
There's agreements with South Sudan, with other African countries.
So, we're seeing a combination.
Saw also immigrants being sent to Guantanamo Bay for the first time who were apprehended in the interior or on land borders, not at sea.
So we're seeing a combination of things.
But if they can't deport you, we are seeing people who have maybe been in detention five, six months or longer, either as they fight their case or as a U.S. tries to figure out a way to send them back.
And Perla, just to be clear, when they are sent to countries that are not their own country, like if they're sent to South Sudan, for instance, do they go straight to prison or are they released into the country?
I think it varies, and that is one of the concerns that human rights and legal advocates have had, right?
In some cases, it's unknown what happens to the individual.
In some cases, they remain detained.
For example, the group of Venezuelans who were sent to El Salvador was specifically sent to this infamous prison called Secot in Panama and Costa Rica.
When we did our reporting, they were put in sort of detention holding centers, but in one case, it was very isolated and they could not leave the premises.
That has changed since then because a lot of time has passed.
So it varies.
In Mexico, I think they're taken to different states in southern Mexico.
And for the most part, they're free to figure out kind of what's next.
And they're not necessarily being put in another detention center.
All right, let's go to callers.
We'll start with A.D. in Louisville, Kentucky.
Democrat, go ahead, A.D.
Yes, I just want to thank you, guests, for the hard work that they're doing.
She's doing.
Thank you for your awareness for letting us know.
I think everybody should deserve an opportunity if they're accused of something to go before a judge.
Let the judge determine, not just this administration.
I want to thank you also, C-SPAN, for the great work you're doing, the defendant work that you're doing.
It's clear and truthful.
Keep up the good work, what you're doing, no matter what someone may think, that's just their opinion.
But we know this administration right now doesn't care anything about the truth, even humanity, or people's quality of life.
All right.
Thank you.
And here's John in New York, Republican.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
I want to thank C-SPAN for having me, taking my call.
And I want to, God bless the ICE agents.
May God watch over them.
And I'm watching this young lady that you're interviewing.
She's saying about the illegals.
Consensus On Deportation Logistics00:05:50
First of all, you come to this country illegally, illegally.
You have no rights.
You have no rights.
I don't know what she's talking about.
They're held in detentions.
What they should be doing is deport them right away.
We wouldn't have this problem.
And we wouldn't have this problem if we have open borders.
So I don't know what she's saying that they have rights if they're held six months.
First of all, they shouldn't be held six months.
They should be deported right away.
Okay?
Look what they did.
They're killing American citizens.
They're coming here illegal, spending my tax dollars.
We have laws.
We have to follow laws.
And I don't know what the left is thinking and these people are thinking, protesting ICE.
We have laws we have to follow.
That's the bottom line.
It's not fair to us an American citizen.
My grandparents came from Italy, the right-way trail asylum.
And back then, you had to learn English.
And that's the other thing.
We have one language in America.
It's called English.
So if you come here illegally, you got no rights.
You should get deported.
John, let's get an answer for you.
Go ahead, Perla.
No, I think basically regardless of your status, there's certain constitutional rights that everyone has, including to due process.
And we've seen that in judges' opinions very explicitly, saying that people have a right to due process, and that's part of the legal argument.
When he said that they should just be deported right away, when they are being held in a detention facility, what are they being held for?
So there's different things, right?
I think there's a logistics part that I was explaining.
There's some countries that are not taking back their nationals, which has presented a challenge for administrations from both parties.
Then there's also the case that some people have pending claims for relief, whether that's asylum or I was talking to a young man from Florida yesterday whose wife is in detention and she's married to a U.S. citizen and they had a pending application to adjust her status through her husband and she's detained.
So there's reasons, right?
They're following a process.
I got to witness people who were showing up to immigration court in El Paso and had a pending case and the judge had given them, the immigration judge had given them a date to come back and then they were detained by ICE agents outside the courthouse and told that they could continue their case from detention.
So I think they're, you know, either the logistics because they're waiting to figure out how to deport them or because they actually have a process to go through and the government is just saying that they can go through that process, but they need to do it from detention.
Hugo in Virginia, Line for Independence, you're on the air.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Thank you for taking my call and thanks for all you do as well.
You know, my one question is about basically, I can't figure out why we haven't resolved this issue.
You know, people come here illegally because they, for a whole host of reasons, feel like they've broken the law.
So the question is, how come we haven't been able to fix this?
We need people to do all kinds of jobs and all kinds of work.
And honestly, I think there's been a lot of studies about, you know, this idea of replenishment and what countries need to maintain their populations.
And we just, I guess, haven't figured that out.
And I just don't know.
I don't understand why it's not acknowledged.
Just like that gentleman said earlier, you know, his family came from Italy and people's families come from all over the place.
So I don't know if your guest has any comment on that, like why we just haven't figured it out.
And, you know, the last reference I would make is this is Ronald Reagan.
He had this similar decision about what to do.
And, you know, they came to a different kind of approach on this.
And I don't know.
So maybe that's my question.
Go ahead, Pearla.
Yes, I mean, as he said, right, it's been a highly political divisive issue.
You know, Reagan was the last one in the 80s who had the sort of amnesty and allowed a lot of, you know, thousands of people to adjust their status.
In the 90s, we had another big move on immigration under Clinton.
And in that case, it basically also, you know, actually instituted bars keeping people who had been in the country legally and had to return from being able to come back lawfully.
And since then, you had Obama, you had Bush, you had others who have tried to come up with, you continue to hear comprehensive immigration reform, but there's just no consensus.
And I think there's, you know, as he said, there is a labor demand that is acknowledged, but then there's a secure the border question and the question is like, what does a secure border look like?
Does it mean that absolutely no one comes through?
And some say, well, that is actually not possible.
And so, you know, it's a constant tug of work kind of thing where we want more border security, but we want labor.
And we didn't, you know, the idea that if you did not come in, quote unquote, the right way, why should we reward you with eventual path to citizenship?
You had under Obama with the DACA, right, the DREAMers, usually young people who were brought to the U.S. as kids, and that had until recently had some consensus.
So, yes, I think it's just been a constant, you know, highly politicized issue where neither side has been able to come to a consensus.
Conditions in Detention Settings00:13:31
Perla, I want to ask you about the children in detention facilities.
One of your colleagues at ProPublica wrote an article called The Children of Dilley.
This is in Texas.
It's a detention center in Texas.
Can you tell us a little bit about what their conditions are?
Can they continue their schooling?
What can you tell us about that?
Yeah, so family detention has been, I would say, probably always fraught, right?
And it had been shut down precisely because of that.
Doctors, psychologists argue that there's no way to keep children in detention without causing harm just because of the environment.
In this case, they've been reopened.
Families are starting to be held there again.
And what they were telling my colleague and others have reported, right, that they would find worms in the food or food was spoiled.
In terms of education, they're supposed to have some type of education, but it's limited.
One of the kids was telling my colleague Micah that, you know, he can remember, I think he was a teenager and he felt that classes were too basic, but there was nothing else to do.
So he would just get in line and go to do schooling for younger kids.
There's limited recreation.
You're still in a jail-like or constrained setting, right?
Even if they are not necessarily in handcuffs or shackle, the government, I have to say that they say that kids have all the proper meals they need.
They have the medical care they need.
They have the schooling, and they're following all the proper guidelines and dispute what families inside detention center and lawmakers are reporting.
And Perla, are the families being kept together and do they have privacy or are there like multiple families being kept together?
What's the situation as far as privacy goes?
Yeah, my understanding is that, and speaking, so I did not do this reporting, but in speaking with another family that was also detained at Dilly and released, is that dad was separate from mom and daughter for the most part.
They could see each other, but they were not kept separate.
You do have multiple families in place.
I don't believe it's one room per family at all.
It's more like detention setting.
And there's another area where they have single women, females, but I believe that they're also kept separate from the families.
Here's Harold Melbourne, Florida.
Democrat, good morning, Harold.
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, I think we all want to have due process in the United States.
And my concern is when I look out on the internet and I go to a website that talks about the historical immigration court backlog, it looks like any individual that has a case for immigration before court has a wait time of over two years on average.
And I'm just wondering, you know, what is somebody supposed to do for two years while they're waiting for their day in court to be adjudicated?
And why is it that the Congress can't open up more courts and have more judges so that we don't have a two-year backlog?
To me, that just seems un-American if we're talking about due process.
Thank you.
Pearla?
Yeah, the court backlog is certainly a big issue, right?
You have, I can't remember the last, but millions of cases in the backlog.
And I think, you know, critics of what they say that it's happening right now under the current Trump administration say that instead of just focusing on enforcement and expanding detention, the government should put more resources in the court system.
We've seen a number of immigration judges having been fired in the last year.
You know, they say that they're taking away resources.
The administration says that they're letting go some judges, but they were adding others.
But the backlog, it is a big problem, right?
And I think until now, the idea was that you could work and have some sort of permission to be here while your case went through the court system precisely because it was taking too long.
But what we've seen with the removal of people who either came from like the CBP1 app, which was a way that under the Biden administration, they were trying to, the administration said they were trying to bring more order to the border.
So you would make an appointment to show up at the port of entry instead of crossing, waiting through the river or crossing the desert.
And you were able to get a work permit while you went through the process.
Well, a lot of people have lost their work permits.
A lot of people have lost their social security numbers.
And so it does leave people more in a limbo while they go to the process, which as the caller said, could take years, especially if you're outside, which takes me back to one of our earlier discussions.
That is another argument from the administration, right?
That people were abusing the system.
They knew that if they filed an asylum claim, it could be years before it was decided before an immigration judge.
And therefore, it was time that they could live and work in the U.S.
And because it takes longer.
If you're in detention, cases tend to go much faster in a detained setting.
And so, you know, the arguments that if you have people instead inside a detention center, their cases could be resolved faster.
And therefore, if they do not have cause for relief, if they don't have a valid asylum claim, for instance, they could be sent back home.
Darren is calling us from Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
Republican, good morning.
Yes, good morning, ma'am.
Thank you for taking my call.
I hope the spokesperson that are talking about these immigration laws will take this back to Congress and ask them to implement a date that we here in America set aside just for one day for all the immigrants who comes over here on immigration rules and policies that they would be able to come in every state,
every state in America, have that one day, that if you want to stay over here in America legally, just like we do taxes, we got a certain time to fill out our taxes and return them to the RS.
Well, that's the same thing about voting.
We got one day that we come out in America and vote.
We need to have a common sense approach to give these people a chance, one day out of a year, to say, come here and register to stay here.
And if they don't do it legally, whenever we catch them, we just remove them from the country.
That's a common sense approach.
And I hope she take that back to Congress and try to get this done for me.
Thank you.
All right.
What do you think?
I mean, I think right now in the current environment, we're far from being able to see something like that.
I'm not an immigration expert legal expert.
I'm not a lawmaker.
But I think in terms of what we consider the right way, one of the arguments that I continue to hear from people is that those who came under the Biden administration through parole programs, for instance, the Biden administration created a program for people from certain nationalities, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Hondurans, to be able to get a sponsor here and apply from their home country and be able to be what is called paroled in.
And so it was called the CMVH program, and it was a way to avoid people having to traverse the Darien jungle and all of Mexico and put themselves in danger.
There was what I referenced later, the CBP1 appointment.
And I remember back then talking to people who are like, I want to do it the right way.
I don't want to cross illegally.
I want to present myself at the port of entry.
And they would wait five, six months in Mexico, sometimes in dire conditions for a CBP1 appointment.
Well, now under the Trump administration, they're saying that those were not legitimate ways to come into the U.S. I'm hearing a lot from people that I did it the right way.
I did not want to come illegally.
I waited for an appointment or applied through this program, and yet they insist that I came here illegally, and I dispute that.
And so I think, you know, to the caller's point, if you have another administration, would they consider that legitimate, a legitimate way to come or the right way?
So I think that's why you need maybe something more permanent that cannot be as easily changed from one administration to the other, because I think at the end you end up having, leaving people in much more of a limbo state.
So Perla, the people that did come using the app during the Biden administration, the CPB1 app, they are now considered illegal.
Are they, is that being challenged in court or are they all being deported?
So I mean, I think just to clarify, right, like coming into the CBP1 did not mean that it gave people legal status.
I think sometimes there's a little confusion there.
It did not mean, including from the immigrants themselves, that they thought by doing this, they got legal status.
It was simply an opportunity to present yourself at a port of entry and allow you to later file an asylum claim or some sort of other form of relief if you wanted.
So I think when we talk about those who came in with a CBP1, you might have a wide range of people who fit that category.
Some of them file for asylum.
Some of them might file for something else.
Some of them might not have filed for anything.
And they could, you know, be, if there's a workside rate or something or just, you know, apprehensions or arrest for MICE in California or Chicago, they might be caught among those, but it's not considered to have legal status.
And if they had a work permit, some of those are being, I think by and large, they're being canceled.
Online for Democrats in Omaha, Nebraska.
Rafino, you're on the air.
Good morning.
I'm a former immigration lawyer.
And I guess to answer that one guy's question, when the Constitution was made, most of the people realized they were immigrants.
So of course, all of our rights are applied to immigrants.
I think one of the problems is that because when I was a lawyer, they kept restricting all the ways for people to come legal.
And now there's so few options that compared to the European immigrants, it's basically almost impossible to come here legally.
You know, this is kind of a, it is a moral issue.
And of course, because the demographic changes, there's a lot of fear in the white community about culture or something.
But anyway, my question was, in these detention centers, because I live in Nebraska, farmers are using, from what I heard, I'm not in the loop anymore, but from what I've heard,
they're using these immigrants, or I call them indigenous immigrants because they're from the Zimbabwe, but they're using them for free labor on the farms here in Nebraska, which actually amounts to slavery, which is also unconstitutional.
But do you know anything about that?
Per electroviso.
Yeah, I don't know about free labor, but I think there have been criticism that, you know, there's something called the H-2A visa, and it's a visa that farmers can use to bring in workers.
And some argue that sometimes it can lead to slave-like conditions because you're tied to that farm or the pay.
They're supposed to provide housing, but there's been numerous reports of very poor conditions in housing.
So I don't know necessarily of not getting paid at all.
You also have a large share of the undocumented population, you know, or a large share of the farm workforce who is undocumented, which I think, I don't know if you all remember in the beginning of the Trump administration, there was a large raid on a farm in California, but we haven't seen, you know, there was a lot of pushback about that because, you know, you need the workers and we haven't seen at least public, like high-profile rates at farms anymore.
But specifically to Nebraska, I do not know, sir.
Joe in Bedford, Virginia, a Republican, you're on the air.
Sanctuary Cities Controversy00:13:58
Yes, good morning.
Yes, a lot of things I have problems with.
One, there's nothing humane about illegal immigration.
A lot of them girls and women are going to be raped, possibly murdered, human trafficked on the way over here.
And then this nonsense about, oh, you can't arrest somebody if they're at school or church or work.
I'm an American citizen, and if they want me, they're going to grab me wherever I am.
And if I have kids with me, they're going to separate me and the kids.
So that's just a bunch of nonsense.
And I believe the Constitution applies to America's people, not illegals.
And no country can stand the kind of invasion we've had.
We've always had a problem with illegals.
And now we have more illegals than most countries have population.
And it's downright dangerous if they come here legal, fine.
I'd welcome them, but when they're illegal, you don't know.
You've got rapists, murderers, pedophiles, gangbangers, all kinds of bad people.
And here in Virginia, it's going to get a lot worse because we just went from the best governor to absolute bottom of the barrel socialist Woke Card who rolled out the welcome mat for illegal, saying that oh, we're no longer going to cooperate with ICE or anything.
So that's rolling out the welcome mat.
And Virginia is going to get a lot worse because of a careless governor.
Left-wing nut.
All right Joe, let's go ahead and get a response.
Yes, I do think it's not inaccurate to say that a lot of women are sexually assaulted, abused on their way to the United States.
I've spoken to some.
It's, it's been reported, you know it is, it is part.
It is a very dangerous journey to, to migrate there.
They put themselves in in a lot of danger, I think in in term, in terms of the numbers.
It is also known that there was an increase in the number of people coming to the U.S. Under the Biden administration and that's for a combination of reasons.
Right, you were coming out of the pandemic.
Where had it basically had put a sort of wait, and you know a lot of people were in wait and see mode.
A lot of economies were struggling.
So you, in The case of the Venezuelans, for instance, you had thousands of Venezuelans who had left their country because of the situation, to neighboring countries like Colombia or Chile, and then those those economies you know were were not doing great because of the pandemic, and and the U.S.
Was doing much better and, to a previous caller's point, there were jobs, and that attracted a lot of people, in combination with President Biden coming in saying that he was going to take a different approach from from President Trump during his first administration, and so I think you did.
Because of all those reasons, you did end up having a lot more people coming in a very, you know, in a much shorter period of time and per low those the the caller did mention uh the governor saying that they're not going to cooperate with ICE.
I want to ask you about sanctuary state's policies um, with regard to habeas petitions because uh, what's?
Uh what ICE is asking for is, look, if you've got an illegal immigrant and they're in the court system and they're in detention, hold them until we get there and we can take them from there.
However, that would indic that would uh cause that person to be held longer than possibly longer than legally um uh allowed.
Do you think that that would impact these petitions.
So I think it's it's a little bit different right.
So I think what the the habeas petitions, it's more on people who are already in immigration detention, um.
So I think there, whether a place is sanctuary or not is separate, because they're They're already under federal custody.
I think in terms of sanctuary or not and the cooperation with ICE, it's more, for example, if someone is in a county jail.
And based on the crime, you know, they process them, they're supposed to release them.
But ICE puts something that's called a detainer and tells the official, you know, when you're done with them, don't release them.
I'm going to come get them.
And there is a usually a I can't remember exactly if it's 48 hours or not, but there's a time limitation that the local law enforcement official can hold someone legally for federal immigration officers.
And that sometimes, so that can be kind of more on the sanctuary, right?
Our local law enforcement hold, you know, holding people that they come across either because they arrested them or doing a traffic stop or whatever it is for immigration officers.
Do they call them directly or not?
Do they wait for them to arrive?
Do they hold them longer because they're waiting for ICE to pick them up?
And I think that's more where the sanctuary or the level of cooperation a local entity has with immigration with ICE comes into place much more so than the habeas.
Habeas, at that point, you're already talking about a federal system, both the federal court criminal system where they're filing the petitions and the federal immigration detention centers, which are supposed to be a civil matter where the person is being held.
On the line for Democrats, Grand Blanc, Michigan.
Donald, good morning.
Good morning, C-Standled American people and your guests.
I want to get two points out real quick, Mimi.
I took a trip and spent a month in Florida.
We stopped in South Carolina, then we went on down to Florida.
And if ICE is looking for immigrants, they're definitely looking in the wrong states.
Everywhere I went in South Carolina and Florida, there were immigrants cleaning hotels, working in our restaurants, on the streets, doing construction.
So getting rid of immigrants to me is silly because they're paying taxes, they're doing the jobs that white folks don't want to do.
And they are an asset to America.
And then as far as prisons, it is just nothing but a big, big scheme.
I've seen an article where they are getting billions of dollars to open prisons to keep these immigrants in and use them for free labor.
This is just a Trump scam.
Go back to racism.
And America is better than this.
And once these Republicans wake up, these Trump supporters wake up.
So, Donald, let me just go back to what you said as far as the detention centers.
You're saying they're being used for free labor?
Is that what you said?
Correct.
Pearla, is there any evidence that they're being used for labor?
I think in some detention centers, the detainee, the immigrant, has a possibility to work either cleaning or cooking, and they get paid a dollar, I believe, an hour, I think, or a day.
Like, don't quote me on that, but a very, very, very small amount.
And some people have said that that could be, you know, they equate it to free labor because of how minimal it is.
And the detainees that I've talked to is like better than sitting around and not doing anything.
I'd rather do that.
But they do get paid, but it's a minimal amount.
Dee is in Ohio, line for Republicans.
Go ahead, Dee.
Hi, do you know who the Count DeCona Thompson is?
She's a young black woman, 19, murdered, killed, strode over a bridge in Maryland.
Do you know who Kayla Hamilton is?
20-year-old, beat to death.
She's raped, beat to death, robbed of $2.
Illegal immigrant, Maryland.
And everybody knows the story of the Moran girl, beat to death.
Those women were beat so bad they couldn't open their coffins.
Now, how do you explain that?
I don't want to give them not one penny, not one penny.
Bye.
Any comment, Perla?
I think, as with any group of people, you know, I think when you talk about the immigrant population, you do have everything in there, right?
You do have, I think, as we, as we mentioned, in terms of percentages, immigrants tend to commit crimes at much lower levels than native-born citizens or U.S. residents.
But it doesn't mean that you haven't had examples of like the color mention of atrocious acts committed by people who also happen to be in the country without authorization.
This is Steve calling from Florida, Independent Line.
Go ahead, Steve.
Good morning, ladies.
You always seem to confuse the issue of legal immigration and illegal immigration.
It just kind of gets mixed up in your conversation.
We are for legal immigration.
And the illegal immigration, you got to get to the back of the line.
We have law and order in the United States.
It's terrible what's happening.
Everybody hates it.
But the Democrat Party let in over 15 million people unvetted.
They didn't have to worry about COVID shots.
They didn't have to worry about all these measles and everything.
They were never tested.
Somebody built an app, and the cartels are in bed with the Democrat Party.
I mean, how in the hell does this happen in our country?
We want it all broken up.
We have to have law and order.
The people that are here illegally must leave.
That's all there is to it.
We are not going to stand down on this one.
And I respect you, Pearla.
You're trying to help human beings.
But you keep confusing legal immigration with illegal immigration.
And that's the problem.
You mix your words up and it confuses everybody and it makes everybody look like they're mean ogres for wanting people out of the country.
You know, we want the legal immigrants.
That's who we want in the country.
The people that came here illegally, you're going to be running scared for the next three years because we are going to take you out of the country.
Now, they have no rights under the U.S. Constitution.
There is no say that the illegals have any rights under the U.S. Constitution.
And you're confusing that.
All right.
Go ahead, Perla.
I think to start with, you know, I'm a journalist.
Just to clarify for our callers and viewers that I am not an advocate.
I am not a lawyer.
I am a journalist just reporting what our investigations show and what we hear from those experts.
In terms of legal, illegal, there's always the, you hear about the line, right?
But there is no really no such thing as a line.
Someone who was talking earlier, a lot of the migration that you have, the legal migration that you have in the U.S. is through family ties.
And depending on those family connections or the country you come from, those can take many, many years.
Another avenue for legal migration is employment visas.
And I mentioned the H-2A, there's the H-1B for professionals, but that is also being curtailed in some ways by the administration.
And there are some within the administration that feel that you have too many of those as well, that you have too many H-1B visas, or there's a lot of fraud in that.
You had another way of refugees under this current Trump administration.
They've really cut back on the number of refugees being admitted to a minimal amount.
And so that is another avenue that people could come into the U.S. legally that has also been diminished greatly.
So I think there is a difference between authorized and unauthorized migration.
I think we have been talking about people who were in the process by and large.
A lot of the habeas claims that we were talking about are people who had some sort of status or in the process or claims to get there.
And so they're in the middle of their process by and large.
And Pearlie, I did look up that it's for payment, it's a minimum of $1 per day for detainees.
Now, are these detention centers being run by the government or by private companies?
Most of them, there's a range of detention centers and types of facilities.
A lot of them are run by private entities.
Some of them are run in sort of a combination, but they're two major groups, GEO and CoreCivic, are the two largest companies that run the private immigration detention facilities.
And that's Perla Treviso.
She is a reporter with ProPublica's Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative.
You can find her work at propublica.org.
Joining Us: Roger Zakheim00:01:09
Thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
Welcome back.
Joining us to discuss foreign policy is Roger Zakheim.
He is the director of the Ronald Reagan Institute.
Roger, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me on.
So first, just tell us about the Ronald Reagan Institute, what your mission is, and what your approach is to foreign policy.
Yeah, thanks.
So the Reagan Institute is the think-tang arm of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Institute based out in Simi Valley, California, the home of the Reagan Library.
The Reagan Institute is based in D.C.
And what we do there is promote Reagan's principles and ideals in the heart of our national capital, seeking to advance individual liberty, economic opportunity, peace through strength.
And when it comes to foreign policy and national security, we do a lot to look to advance freedom of democracy as well as peace through strength.
That's our focus.
So let's start with the negotiations, indirect negotiations going on now with Iran.
What are you expecting to come out of that?
are you optimistic that there could be a nuclear deal my own view is that the iranians are looking