0:00

Marshall here. Welcome back to The

0:02

Realignment. The

0:08

border and immigration policy as a

0:10

whole have been some of the

0:13

most dominant issues in American politics

0:15

over the past 10 years. Zooming

0:17

out, Western democracies are all experiencing

0:19

populist assaults on the center-right and

0:22

center-left establishments driven by debates over

0:24

immigration. Right now then,

0:26

listeners are probably wondering what's going

0:28

on at the U.S. Mexico border.

0:30

Everything from the Biden Senate negotiations

0:33

to asylum policy and the busting

0:35

of migrants to blue cities. All

0:37

that doesn't even include the Supreme

0:39

Court's ruling on Texas'

0:42

standoff with the administration

0:45

over razor wire at the border. Today's

0:47

guest, Jonathan Blitzer, has just released an

0:49

excellent book about how we got here

0:51

in the first place. It's called Everyone

0:53

Who Is Gone Is Here, the United

0:56

States, Central America, and the Making of a

0:58

Crisis. What I found so interesting in the

1:00

book is the real focus on Central America.

1:02

If you grew up in the 2000s like

1:04

I did, you would think of immigration debates,

1:06

whether it's debates over legalization and amnesty to

1:09

the actual border itself. You would think of

1:11

it through the lens of U.S. Mexico policy.

1:13

What's really changed over the past 10 years

1:15

is the real centrality of debates over asylum

1:18

for Central Americans. Even, as we get into

1:20

during the conversation, Latin Americans from countries like

1:22

Venezuela and Chile. All this together means that

1:24

if we're going to understand the daily news

1:27

items, you're going to have to get the

1:29

broader context, which once again, Jonathan does such

1:31

a great job of doing. Hope you all

1:34

enjoy this conversation. Of course, a huge thank

1:36

you to The Foundation for Make the Innovation

1:38

for supporting the work of its podcast.

1:42

Jonathan Blitzer, welcome to The

1:44

Realignment. Thanks for having me.

1:47

I think the key thing for an

1:49

episode and a book like this is that folks

1:51

are going to have so many different questions that are going

1:54

to be really answered by the

1:56

narrative. But I just want to jump

1:58

around, read the book, took note. So

2:01

big question for you here. I am 31

2:03

years old. So a lot of my

2:05

initial thoughts on immigration and everything is

2:08

really centered in the 2000s, obviously, where

2:10

this is primarily as you write a

2:12

story about the US and Mexico. That's

2:14

how we're thinking about immigration issues. Since

2:17

2014, however, in these various border

2:20

crises issues, pick your euphemism. It's

2:22

really much more centered on Central

2:24

America. So starting here

2:26

first, what is the biggest

2:29

implication of the shift from a Mexico-centric

2:31

migration debate to a

2:33

Central American-centric migration debate?

2:36

Sure. I mean, the real question

2:38

at the core of it all, at the

2:40

core of kind of the different demographic shifts,

2:43

is basically what the typical profile is of

2:45

someone who's arriving at the southern border and

2:47

what it is that they're seeking. And

2:49

so the kind of key takeaway from the

2:52

years leading up to 2014 and

2:54

in the early 2000s was that the

2:56

types of people who were typically showing up in

2:58

the greatest numbers at the southern border were

3:01

single men from Mexico crossing the

3:03

border looking for work. The

3:06

shift that we started to see in the

3:08

kind of late 2010s around that really kind

3:10

of came to the fore in 2014 was

3:13

that you had unaccompanied children and

3:15

families from Central America seeking asylum.

3:18

And one of the reasons why this was such

3:20

a profound shift was just in terms of the

3:23

sheer number of people showing up, just

3:25

absolutely overwhelmed the system at that moment

3:27

in time. But the

3:29

reason it overwhelmed the system was that

3:31

it's much harder to process people who

3:33

show up seeking asylum because by law,

3:35

the US has to hear

3:38

their asylum claims. It has to find

3:40

some way of holding them while it

3:42

hears the asylum claim. It needs to

3:44

send that asylum claim through the

3:46

immigration court system. There is a

3:48

whole process that gets built up around

3:50

an asylum claim, and it

3:52

becomes really burdensome and hard to manage.

3:55

When you have five volumes of people coming at

3:57

a steady clip, all seeking asylum.

4:00

And so now, actually, what's interesting about the precise

4:02

moment, which we're talking now, is

4:04

that the profile is shifting yet again.

4:07

Central Americans are still crossing the border, showing

4:09

up at the order in large numbers seeking asylum, but

4:11

you now also have more

4:13

people from South America. You have more

4:15

of a global population. And

4:17

again, all of them now are seeking asylum

4:19

at the southern border, which presents a real

4:22

administrative challenge to the system because there is

4:24

a requirement by law to

4:26

hear people's claims. So

4:29

it requires resources, time, a great

4:31

deal of thought and organization operationally.

4:33

Yeah. So, and I

4:35

think what's so interesting about the demographics

4:37

changing is that if, let's just say

4:40

you're a generic centrist, and I'm not

4:42

saying this disparagingly, but if you're a

4:44

center politician in the 2000s,

4:46

the response to single young

4:48

men is, hey, let's pass a guest

4:50

worker program. There are

4:52

some pretty straightforward responses you could introduce

4:54

into the political system that

4:57

separate from the debate over them, you could see as being

4:59

a response to that dynamic in the first place. They're going

5:01

to come here for a few years. They're going to work.

5:03

We have work issues. They go back.

5:05

They remit back to Mexico, etc. etc. What

5:08

policy options did the center

5:10

kind of have to the 2014 and

5:12

onwards direction? Because nothing immediately comes

5:15

to mind. And obviously, like

5:17

the guest worker programs didn't pass, but you at

5:19

least had a straightforward, we just laid this out

5:21

on the table option that people could have gone

5:23

with. So I'd love to hear your articulation. No,

5:25

no, it's a great question. I mean, I think

5:27

you kind of have a convergence of problems, first

5:29

of all. I mean, before you can even get

5:32

to what some policy solutions might look like to

5:34

a large number of asylum seekers at the southern

5:36

border, you do have to reckon with the

5:38

fact that for complex

5:41

but understandable reasons, you had

5:43

around 2014, a kind

5:45

of collision of things that redefined the

5:47

political and policy debates surrounding immigration in

5:49

the US. The first is,

5:52

you have comprehensive immigration reform moving

5:54

through Congress at that moment. And time

5:56

it passed the Senate, a bipartisan, comprehensive

5:59

immigration reform bill. passed the Senate in 2013, it

6:01

died in the Republican controlled house where the speaker

6:03

at the time, John Boehner, refused to bring it

6:05

up for vote. One

6:08

of the reasons it died in the way

6:10

that it did at the time that it

6:12

did was that you had increasingly sort of

6:16

a turbulent situation at the southern border where

6:19

Republicans could game out that moment

6:21

politically and- Also, don't forget Eric

6:23

Cantor. You actually see a

6:26

very literal example of someone who, a

6:28

future speaker, losing his role because of a

6:30

debate over immigration. Well, exactly. Exactly.

6:33

And that, people inside the Obama administration, for

6:35

instance, at the time said that when Cantor

6:37

lost his primary in 2014, that

6:39

was kind of the beginning of the end.

6:41

That's when they realized the bottom fell out

6:43

of the comprehensive immigration reform push. But

6:46

of course, you see a pairing for political purposes

6:48

of blaming the border, kind of

6:50

writing off the prospect of

6:52

immigration reform with

6:54

the kind of pretext that the border is just out of

6:56

control. We have to get the border under control first. So

6:59

Republicans in Congress were slow walking immigration reform

7:01

and resisting it in the house. You

7:04

have the border crisis that flares up

7:06

simultaneously to the kind of final throws

7:08

of this comprehensive reform effort. And

7:11

then what begins to happen is because politically

7:13

it gets harder and harder to reform

7:17

the immigration system, you have a

7:19

system that's increasingly antiquated and outdated

7:21

and isn't retooled or able to

7:23

respond to the world as we're

7:26

living in it. And

7:28

so what starts to happen is the

7:30

types of people who are showing up at the southern border

7:32

are people who, a lot

7:34

of them have legitimate asylum claims. A

7:37

lot don't. A lot

7:39

of people are crossing for a number

7:41

of different reasons, poverty, extreme weather events,

7:44

family reunification, whatever it may be. If

7:47

the system could be reformed in a more

7:49

thoroughgoing way, there would be other legal avenues

7:51

for these people to come to the United

7:53

States legally and work legally in the United

7:55

States. But increasingly, what you start

7:57

to see during these years is the door to

7:59

the border. on reforming the system

8:01

in other ways, on expanding legal immigration,

8:03

keeps shutting. And so the pressure point

8:06

increasingly becomes the southern border and seeking

8:08

asylum at the southern border. To

8:10

your question concretely, okay, how do you handle

8:12

an influx of people at the southern border,

8:14

all of whom need to have their asylum

8:16

claims heard? There are kind of

8:19

two categories, as I think about it,

8:21

for understanding what some of the policy

8:23

options are. The first sound honestly very

8:25

technocratic, but they do matter. Things like

8:28

hiring more immigration judges, increasing

8:31

staffing at an agency

8:33

called Citizenship and Immigration Services,

8:35

USCIS, where there are asylum

8:37

officers who basically have

8:39

the initial asylum screening with migrants who arrive. There

8:42

are all kinds of things, there are things you

8:44

can do to help reduce the

8:46

backlog in immigration courts, because that

8:48

poses a very specific and concrete

8:50

problem for processing future claims. Some

8:53

of these reforms have been undertaken before, some of these measures,

8:55

I mean it wasn't a great mystery that these things would

8:57

help. They had been undertaken before, there was

8:59

a smaller scale asylum crisis in

9:01

the early 90s, and these kinds of measures

9:03

helped. What had changed between the

9:05

90s and 2014 was just the scale. And

9:08

so I think in the longer term, and this

9:10

leads to the second category of things, you

9:13

know, in essence what

9:16

the thinking has to begin to evolve toward, and

9:18

it's just hard to imagine given our politics, is

9:21

that there needs to be some way

9:23

of processing people and hearing their claims

9:25

before they reach the US southern border.

9:27

So in an ideal world where things

9:29

weren't mired in, you know, partisan bickering

9:31

all the time, and where Congress could

9:33

do some basic functions, there

9:36

would be an adult conversation about the fact that,

9:38

okay, there are so many people who are seeking

9:41

asylum and relief at the southern border. Maybe

9:43

there are ways of setting up regional processing

9:45

centers in Latin America, or allowing people to

9:48

apply from their home countries before they leave,

9:50

so that you're not dealing with this sudden

9:52

operational disaster when everyone shows up at the

9:55

southern border. But for that to happen, that

9:57

requires time and money and kind

10:00

of political fortitude and like all of those

10:02

things are in short supply. What's

10:05

the difference between Remain in Mexico during

10:07

the Trump era and that then? Because

10:11

a smarter Trump administration would just say things like

10:13

these are regional processing centers. But it's also saying

10:15

so what's the difference between what you just

10:17

advocated and what Trump was doing? A

10:20

lot. I mean, I should say one thing about

10:23

what Trump did with Remain in Mexico. That

10:25

idea of Remain in Mexico, which, you know,

10:27

is essentially taking people who showed up at

10:29

the southern border, who were seeking asylum, shunting

10:31

them into northern Mexico and saying, look, you

10:33

have to wait here while the system sort

10:35

of slowly grinds on. And as we eventually

10:37

move your case through the system, that

10:39

idea itself, I mean, this is kind of the classic

10:41

Trump problem, the way the

10:44

Trump administration instituted that idea, and

10:47

the way they kind of thought of that idea was

10:49

full of bad faith, and it was deliberately

10:51

shoddy. And there were there was no real

10:53

regard for the people's lives who were caught

10:55

up in this new system. That

10:58

idea itself wasn't so outlandish.

11:00

If you are having this

11:02

conversation in government circles in

11:05

the 20 you know, 2014, 2015, 2016,

11:07

the idea that maybe there needs to

11:09

be a more serious

11:11

and sustained international operation

11:13

along the US Mexico border, where

11:16

you have, you know, international organizations,

11:18

maybe the UN is involved, maybe

11:20

the, you know, the international office

11:22

of migration is involved, kind

11:25

of doing different outreach and coordination so

11:27

that people can wait safely in Mexico. There

11:30

are versions, in other words, of Remain

11:32

in Mexico that weren't the Trumpiest version,

11:34

where the well being of

11:37

people was, you know,

11:39

could be factored in. I'm not saying that

11:41

that was ever an

11:43

idea that was fully advanced or fully fleshed

11:45

out. The only version of the idea we

11:47

ever saw was the Trump administration's Remain in

11:49

Mexico, which was obviously catastrophic. So

11:52

setting up regional, you

11:55

know, sort of processing centers is

11:57

different in that your goal, if

11:59

you were to set up offices all over Latin

12:01

America is you are trying to get

12:03

people to apply to, you know, to

12:05

lodge their claims, to set this process

12:08

in motion. You're not reacting to people

12:10

who are arriving and then kind of

12:12

shunting them off to a foreign government.

12:14

Instead, you're basically leaving the door open

12:16

to they're coming to the United States,

12:18

but you're acknowledging the fact that there

12:20

needs to be some way to manage

12:22

the flow. So there are different

12:24

kinds of categories. I mean, what's so strange about all

12:27

of this is the operations are pretty limited.

12:29

I mean, there aren't that

12:31

many permutations of sort of

12:33

like what the core level operations could look

12:35

like. There's like the ugly version of things,

12:38

which Trump has really, I think, displayed

12:41

the kind of fallout of. And

12:43

then there are there are versions that I

12:45

think are complicated, but that are less well

12:47

tested that, you know, maybe would

12:49

be a way of dealing with some of this problem. Yeah,

12:52

I feel like knowing a bunch

12:55

of people who worked in the Trump administration, if we're

12:57

going to get real about what's going on here is

13:00

not only is that

13:02

remaining Mexico policy designed as a deterrent for

13:05

under the theory that deterrence is the

13:07

way that you reduce the migrants coming

13:09

in, but also adverts that there's much

13:11

less consensus in favor of

13:13

our current asylum policy than I'd

13:15

say public discourse would would really suggest. Because

13:17

doing the process you're describing with the regional

13:20

processing centers suggests that, hey, like this is

13:22

a legitimate process. And if there are people

13:24

who like aren't quite shouldn't be there, there's

13:26

a world where like half of the people

13:28

who show up are going to come in.

13:30

I think that'd be a situation that Trump

13:32

people would find objectionable. So I guess like

13:34

the question everybody asked for you is like, what

13:36

would you actually say the

13:38

consensus on

13:41

whether or not administration

13:43

support or unhappy with the current law and asylum?

13:45

Like, what would you say that situation is? You

13:49

know, one top DHS official recently told me

13:51

that like the way to understand having this

13:53

conversation is to embrace the fact that there's

13:55

simply no center. There's no agreement at all.

13:58

I think there's disagreement every way you book.

14:00

I think the kind of core animating principle

14:02

of the Republican side of the debate, particularly

14:05

from the Trump years on, is

14:07

an opposition to immigration in all forms. And

14:09

this is not a tendentious view, to be

14:11

clear. I mean, this is just an accounting

14:14

of not only what their statements

14:16

of intent were, but their actual track

14:18

record. They wanted to restrict legal

14:20

immigration, as well as illegal immigration to the

14:23

United States. On the other side,

14:25

I think there's a on the Democratic side, I

14:27

think there is honestly a lot of disagreement and

14:29

a lot of uneasiness about

14:31

how to move forward. I think

14:34

everyone in some form or another recognizes

14:36

the fact that the asylum system needs

14:38

to be retooled. I don't think that

14:41

is an

14:43

unfair concession to make. I mean, the

14:45

numbers are simply too high. The

14:48

resources simply aren't there. There needs

14:50

to be some way of dealing

14:52

with this problem more systematically. There's

14:55

total disagreement about the best way to do that. But

14:58

I think most Democrats would,

15:01

some publicly, others privately say, yeah,

15:05

we have a problem here. The system just isn't built

15:07

for the reality of the world. But

15:11

I think until there's a viable path

15:13

through Congress, all of

15:15

this is essentially academic, because there's just no hope.

15:17

I mean, we're watching a debate play out right

15:19

now in the Senate, where the terms are extremely

15:22

conservative. And the Republicans can't

15:24

even all get on board in the Senate

15:26

to say nothing of the Republican House. And

15:28

that is for an incredibly minor, or I

15:31

should say narrow aspect of

15:33

the asylum system. That's not

15:35

comprehensive immigration reform. So

15:38

I think it's hard. And I think a

15:40

kind of inconvenient fact for progressive

15:42

minded people like myself, honestly, is

15:44

the fact that

15:46

the majority of people who show up at

15:48

the southern border seeking asylum, don't

15:51

qualify for asylum according to the

15:53

actual language of the statute. And

15:56

so the question then is what you do with

15:58

that, you know, kind of more. humane,

16:00

thoughtful way of looking at that population is

16:02

to say, okay, well, their reasons for

16:04

coming to the border are no less

16:07

urgent. But maybe it's wrong to have

16:09

kind of frozen the entire immigration system

16:11

in place and assume that the only

16:13

way to deal with people is through the asylum system. Maybe there

16:15

are people who are fleeing climate

16:18

change or endemic poverty

16:20

or violent that doesn't amount to

16:22

persecution per se, but maybe there are other

16:25

ways that they could apply for entry into

16:27

the US that isn't strictly speaking through the

16:29

asylum system at the southern border. Yeah,

16:32

could you explain given that? Could you

16:34

explain two buckets and maybe I don't

16:36

want to say valid because that seems, you know, pejorative,

16:38

but like what are reasons

16:40

for asylum seeking that the system allows for and

16:42

what are ones that we could be sympathetic towards

16:45

but ultimately don't call finder the letter of the

16:47

law? What are those two buckets? Yeah, yeah. And

16:49

I say this is very, you know, this is very personal

16:51

for me. And I know for a lot of other journalists

16:54

and legal advocates who work on this because, you know, you

16:56

meet people who's who were, you know, traveling

16:58

to the US, because their life

17:00

depends on it. And there's

17:03

like this technical question of what

17:05

the statute says on the same.

17:07

So the law itself basically identifies

17:09

different kinds of identity based persecution.

17:12

And so if, you know,

17:14

if what you're fleeing

17:17

doesn't fall under these very

17:19

specific categories of identity based

17:21

persecution, it's often an

17:23

uphill battle to win in an immigration court.

17:26

I should say, it depends where you

17:28

apply for asylum. There's also notorious

17:30

variants from immigration court to immigration court.

17:32

So for instance, if you're seeking

17:34

asylum in Illinois, you have a much

17:37

better chance of getting it than if you were seeking asylum

17:39

in Texas. That's

17:41

a problem. I mean, that seems kind

17:43

of crazy and random, but it's a fact

17:45

of our system as well. There's a lot

17:48

of subjectivity and how these cases get adjudicated.

17:50

One quick thing to understand how that situation

17:52

happens. Assuming, aside, someone flies into Chicago O'Hare

17:54

from somewhere, are you describing the

17:56

person's applying in Chicago as being someone who

17:58

like Texas, I'm in Austin,

18:01

so got here and then was bust to

18:03

Illinois and then they're applying to have their

18:05

cases adjudicated there. Like I'm just trying to

18:08

understand like why would end up in Illinois

18:10

rather than Texas. I mean, there are different

18:12

ways. There are a few different ways

18:14

it can happen. I mean, one way you can apply

18:16

for asylum, you have basically by law right now and

18:18

this, you know, if the Senate deal

18:20

moves forward and passes again, which I don't think

18:23

is likely you have a year when you enter

18:25

the US, you have a year during which you

18:27

can apply for asylum. And then if

18:29

that year passes and you haven't applied for

18:31

asylum, the law basically says you're out

18:33

of luck. And so there are different

18:35

ways you can apply for asylum. You can cross

18:38

the border in between ports of entry.

18:40

This is what's commonly referred to as

18:42

illegal or irregular migration, crossing between ports

18:44

of entry, getting apprehended by border patrol.

18:47

And when you're apprehended saying, I want

18:50

to seek asylum, I've crossed the border

18:52

in pursuit of asylum.

18:55

And that then starts your process. And so technically, they

18:57

put you in what are called removal proceedings. It's the

18:59

sort of burden falls on you in a way to

19:01

prove that you have a legitimate asylum claim, but that's

19:04

one way to do it. And then

19:06

there's also a kind of a different

19:08

way of applying where, you know, you

19:10

proactively file an application, maybe come to

19:12

the US legally,

19:15

or you arrive in the US in some other

19:17

fashion, and you apply

19:20

that way once you're here or at a

19:22

port of entry. And that would, you know,

19:24

move the process forward in a different way.

19:26

And depending on, you know, where maybe you're

19:28

reuniting with family in Illinois, maybe, you know,

19:30

that's where you've settled. That's how

19:32

you end up with a case there rather than say in

19:34

Texas or in California. So

19:37

to your earlier question, you

19:40

know, there are these different forms of identity based

19:43

persecution that asylum law is

19:45

built around over the years, what

19:47

counts as identity based persecution has evolved

19:49

a bit. The legal advocates have made

19:51

claims that for instance, if

19:53

you're living in Central America, and

19:56

you have been victimized by a

19:58

violent street gang. Technically,

20:01

the way the statute was written in

20:03

1980, there was

20:05

no consideration of a world

20:07

in which a gang like MS-13 would effectively

20:09

be a shadow state in a country like

20:11

El Salvador. So

20:14

you know, so what is the best fascinating? Okay,

20:16

go on. Go on. This

20:19

question of like, okay, you know, it's

20:21

one thing if you're fleeing state repression,

20:23

that kind of fits a more classic

20:25

definition of asylum. The state is persecuting

20:27

me because I'm gay or because I'm

20:29

Jewish or whatever it may be. It's

20:32

different when you're getting victimized by a gang

20:34

that kind of is maybe the de facto

20:36

government of a country, kind of runs the

20:38

day-to-day life of a country, but technically isn't

20:40

the government. What happens in that case? Why

20:42

is that a key thing? Why is the

20:44

gang victimized? So why is MS-13? What are

20:46

they doing and why are they doing it?

20:50

Well, you know, it would

20:52

depend kind of what form

20:54

of violence and harassment

20:56

and persecution someone

20:58

can claim is happening. But

21:01

I think over time, there have been different, there

21:03

have been kind of a, there's been

21:05

a wider understanding of how we should

21:07

understand persecution based on the original terms

21:09

of the statute to try to account

21:11

for some of the kind of messier

21:13

realities of day-to-day life in the region

21:15

and beyond. Even

21:18

so, to give you a concrete example, a

21:24

domestic violence victim who

21:27

flees, say, Guatemala and comes to

21:29

the United States seeking asylum can

21:32

now make a more identity-based

21:34

argument that violent

21:36

misogyny is so pervasive in

21:38

Guatemala or in

21:40

her community in Guatemala that

21:43

there is an identity-based reason why she is

21:45

seeking protection in the United States and

21:47

that a broader understanding of the context of her

21:49

identity in Guatemala, to use this

21:52

example, is what would make her eligible

21:54

for asylum under these terms. So like

21:56

you have these kinds of things, but even over

21:58

and above all of that, A lot

22:00

of what we're seeing right now, for instance, migrants

22:03

coming from Venezuela. Venezuela

22:05

is run by a teetering,

22:08

repressive socialist government.

22:10

The economy has completely collapsed, something

22:12

like five million people have left

22:14

since 2014. The state has completely

22:18

crumbled. There's a

22:20

kind of vigilantism that governs life on

22:22

the streets. There's not food. Inflation is

22:24

out of control. People

22:26

have no choice but to

22:29

leave the country. What happens when

22:31

if in Venezuela, fleeing those circumstances

22:33

arrives at the border and seeks asylum?

22:35

Right now, because the numbers are so

22:37

great, there are different things that the government

22:39

is doing. But in theory,

22:42

that person wouldn't necessarily, in the state

22:44

of a very specific case they could

22:46

make, is it fleeing persecution? It might

22:49

be a generalized state of violence. Then

22:51

there's this immediate question of, okay, well,

22:53

so how can the law accommodate someone

22:55

who's fleeing for urgent reasons, who's not

22:57

trying to game the system in bad

22:59

face, who's bringing his or her

23:01

family north because it's their only option? How

23:05

can they come to the United States legally?

23:07

What moral and legal obligation can the US,

23:09

does the United States have to respond to

23:11

someone like that, outside of the very specific

23:13

terms of the 1980 Refugee Act,

23:15

which is what sets forth the language on the

23:17

statute? I guess what I wonder

23:19

then, especially given the Venezuelan example is, if

23:22

you are fleeing

23:24

justifiably Venezuela, you're

23:26

passing through Colombia, you're going to

23:29

go to Panama, etc., etc., etc.

23:31

How does that not affect the

23:34

asylum claim? Because once

23:36

again, Colombia

23:38

has its issues, but it's definitely not 1990s

23:40

or 2000s Colombia. So if it's

23:43

purely for persecution or state

23:45

collapse, I

23:48

think this is where I think people in good faith

23:50

can be kind of confused about how the system works.

23:53

Why aren't you applying for asylum in Colombia? Yeah,

23:55

listen, you're hitting on what

23:58

this just a step back. just

24:00

for one second because I think one of

24:02

the things that's so complicated in

24:04

the journalistic space around this is there

24:06

are all of these very legitimate and complex

24:08

questions, which is like one you just asked.

24:11

And then there's the like political overlay that

24:13

you know, kind of mystify, you know,

24:15

just sort of, you know, you lose

24:17

the strain. But but basically, you know,

24:19

this is a, this is a policy

24:21

question that, you know, Democrats and Republicans

24:25

have raised that list, you know, you might hear

24:27

it, you might hear the

24:29

phrase safe third country agreement. Or,

24:31

you know, anyway, I

24:34

can get very technical with some of the terms that are

24:36

used. But there's a little bit of this idea that listen,

24:38

if people are crossing through other countries, maybe that should make

24:40

them ineligible to apply for asylum in the United States. I

24:43

think explaining why,

24:45

you know, traveling through

24:48

another country shouldn't make someone

24:50

ineligible in the United States, there are a few reasons. You

24:52

know, one is, um,

24:56

there's a there's a real question of in

24:58

these other countries, what their asylum systems look

25:00

like, if they're actually capable of processing you

25:02

for asylum, you know, so a country like

25:06

Guatemala, for instance, the Trump administration tried

25:08

to create a deal with the Guatemalan

25:10

government where any Central American or South American

25:12

crossing through Guatemala would autumn

25:15

and if they were to eventually reach the United

25:17

States would get deported to Guatemala, where they would

25:19

then have to file an asylum claim. That

25:22

doesn't sound so outlandish. But then you look

25:24

at the fact that, okay, first of

25:26

all, the at that time, the majority of people

25:29

coming to the United States were from Guatemala,

25:31

which is to say, the state of affairs

25:33

in Guatemala was pretty dire to begin with. But

25:36

the Guatemalan government had at that time,

25:38

something like 12 asylum officers in the

25:41

entire country, which is

25:43

to say, if large numbers of people started to show

25:45

up seeking asylum, they wouldn't have the resources to even

25:47

deal with it. So there are

25:49

there are these kinds of questions. And I also

25:51

think another thing that we're seeing right now that

25:53

even just adds another layer of complexity is, you

25:56

know, you might remember in the

25:59

fall of There

26:01

were something like 15,000 Haitians, I mean, this will

26:03

be the old round of this specifically because you're

26:05

in Texas, who got

26:07

stuck under the Del Rio bridge on

26:09

the US-Mexico border. And

26:12

a lot of those Haitians, the vast majority of

26:14

people who got stuck under that bridge, coming

26:17

to the US trying to gain entry and getting

26:20

blocked and eventually deported to Haiti, had

26:22

not been living in Haiti. They had been

26:24

living in Chile. And in other countries in the

26:26

region, they had already fled Haiti. They may have

26:28

fled Haiti a decade ago, started

26:31

to live in other places, to resettle in

26:33

other places. And as a

26:35

result of all of the economic fallout

26:37

that followed COVID, basically found themselves

26:40

living in a place where jobs were

26:42

suddenly scarce. There was a kind

26:44

of economic anxiety in the country. There was

26:46

a racism that flared up, a populism that

26:48

flared up, and they were forced to leave.

26:51

So there are also these

26:53

dislocations that occur even

26:55

along the migratory route that

26:58

make it a little bit more complicated than to say, all

27:00

right, well, listen, if you've landed in another country, shouldn't you

27:02

be fine there? I mean, there's

27:04

just a lot of complex global forces

27:06

that are at play. You

27:08

know, I'd love for you to, and maybe

27:10

we had asylum policies before 1980, kind of

27:13

explain what the rationale

27:15

at the time is because you are articulating

27:17

all these challenges. I myself,

27:19

and I'm sure most listeners are going to

27:21

think of like the SS St. Louis, like

27:23

the nightmare scenario for where we have an

27:25

asylum policy, aka for those who don't know,

27:29

pre World War II, there's literally like

27:31

a ship full of Jews

27:34

who are fleeing Europe. They

27:36

try to come to the United States, they're not let in,

27:38

they go to Cuba, they're not allowed in, they go back,

27:41

and then half of them outright die in the

27:43

Holocaust. That's the definition of a place, by the

27:45

way, which the response to them being German Jews

27:47

was not, oh, just moved to Holland, oh, just

27:50

moved to France, especially considering the collaboration

27:52

that happened thereafter. That's like the perfect

27:54

case of, no, no, no, like the

27:56

United States had to be the final

27:58

destination European Jews

28:01

given the circumstances and fascism, etc, etc,

28:03

etc. So I could totally see in

28:05

that context why we'd be where we

28:07

are. But is that the situation that

28:09

a policymaker in 1980 is thinking of

28:12

when they're thinking about asylum policy? I

28:15

think it's a it's a combination of

28:17

things that come in, come into play

28:19

in 1980. I mean, obviously, there's this

28:21

horrible checkered history of, you know, humanitarian

28:23

failures like that one, which should haunt

28:25

everyone. But what was

28:27

what was happening increasingly was there

28:30

wasn't a there wasn't a systematic

28:32

policy for dealing with refugees and

28:34

asylum seekers. So what would happen

28:36

is there'd be an international emergency

28:38

or crisis, say people fleeing Vietnam

28:40

after the fall of Saigon. And

28:44

there'd be 10s of thousands of refugees.

28:47

And there wasn't a formal means

28:49

for the US to resettle them

28:51

in the country. And so what would happen

28:54

is the government would

28:56

use an executive authority called parole

28:58

to basically say, okay, these

29:00

are emergency circumstances, we are going to create

29:02

this temporary status for you, we will technically

29:04

allow you to come into the United States.

29:07

You're here, we've brought you here.

29:10

And now there's this conundrum of, okay, well, what do we do

29:12

that that you're here? There at

29:14

the time, what repeatedly happened was the

29:17

US government would parole all of these

29:19

populations into the US following major international

29:21

incidents, you know, Hungarians

29:23

in the 50s, Soviet Jews in the

29:26

late 70s, whatever. They

29:28

would arrive in the US, and then Congress

29:30

would have to pass an act called

29:33

an adjustment act to basically say, okay,

29:35

when you're now giving you we are

29:37

now supplying a path to legal status

29:39

for you. Parole alone was just a

29:41

temporary measure to get you here. Now

29:43

we have to actually create a kind

29:45

of legal infrastructure for you to plug

29:47

into. And so this, as you can

29:49

imagine, gets very chaotic and very burdensome.

29:51

So one of the things that led

29:53

to the creation of the 1980 Refugee

29:55

Act was the realization that, you know,

29:57

one, we need to get in step

29:59

with... international human rights law and immigration

30:02

law where there are very clearly set

30:04

forth principles of You know protection that

30:06

should be afforded to people who show

30:08

up at the country's borders But

30:10

the idea was to be more

30:12

systematic and rigorous about how

30:14

it dealt with large populations of people who needed to

30:17

be resettled in the United States and

30:19

a big thing that animated how the US

30:21

government prior to 1980 a big thing that

30:23

animated how the US government handle

30:25

these situations involving large populations that

30:28

US government would decide you know did

30:30

or didn't merit Consideration for

30:32

being paroled into the United States was Cold War

30:35

politics. And so what would happen is The

30:37

United States government would routinely

30:40

parole in populations

30:42

that were fleeing Communist

30:44

governments the words were listed were

30:47

literally quasi-allies were feeling guilty or

30:49

not supporting the Hungarians Etc,

30:52

etc, etc. Exactly. Exactly. And so

30:54

what you had was essentially a

30:56

kind of ad hoc policy of

30:58

parole that functioned

31:00

mainly as an outgrowth of you

31:02

of kind of geopolitics and US

31:04

foreign policy rather than operating from

31:06

a principle of You

31:08

know human rights and immigration law

31:11

setting forth a sort of

31:13

objective non-ideological standards for

31:15

protection So that's

31:18

sort of what the what the kind of the sort

31:20

of immediate factors were that led to the creation of the 1980

31:22

refugee act though the kind

31:25

of complication and what's kind of an amazing

31:27

sort of kink in its history was that

31:29

at the time it was

31:31

not Imaginable really to the policymakers that there

31:33

would suddenly be huge numbers of people showing

31:35

up at the US southern border Instead

31:38

the expectation was we would be dealing

31:40

with populations far away who would need

31:42

to get resettled in the United States

31:44

Which means the government has some control

31:46

over a how many people are

31:48

coming be when and how they come What

31:52

was a great wild card which they didn't anticipate at

31:54

the time? And what's obviously got us to where we

31:56

are right now is the fact that huge numbers of

31:58

people just showed up at the southern border And

32:00

so this is the distinction between refugees and asylum

32:02

seekers. Refugees have been in our

32:05

system, have been processed already so that when they

32:07

reach the United States, their

32:09

legal situation is already arranged. We're

32:11

on the path to being normalized.

32:15

Asylum seekers are first showing up at the border and the

32:17

US government is forced to deal with their

32:19

claims. And so initially,

32:22

you know, what the framers of the 1980 Refugee

32:24

Act thought was, okay, every

32:27

year we've seen about 2000 people

32:29

show up at our southern border. All right, let's

32:31

be generous. Let's kind of budget for about

32:33

5000 people every year. So

32:36

what happens a few weeks after

32:38

the passage of the 1980 Refugee

32:41

Act is an incident called the

32:43

Mariel Boat List, where in

32:45

a matter of months, 125,000 Cubans start showing up at the

32:52

port in Miami for a whole

32:54

combination of complicated reasons that Fidel Castro has to

32:56

do with, which we could talk about. And

32:59

so, you know, I spoke to people who

33:01

wrote the 1980 Refugee Act, who at that

33:04

moment in time, literally weeks after that was

33:06

signed into law, travel to Miami are staring

33:08

out at the port in Miami and thinking,

33:11

my God, what do we just

33:13

sign? How do we square the values of what

33:15

we just signed with the operational chaos of, you

33:18

know, tens of thousands of people showing up at, you know, at

33:20

a port, at a port, at a port of entry, at the

33:22

border. So you know, even

33:25

from the very beginning, asylum was complicated by

33:27

these logistics. I think this

33:29

gets to the difficulty and where, why

33:31

we find ourselves in an inconvenient place

33:33

here, even the Cuban context of, you

33:35

know, Castro fits into a Cold War

33:37

geopolitical first broader coalition or aspects that

33:40

prevent just the just

33:42

recurring pattern of not just like

33:44

inaction, but just kind of like

33:46

kicking the can

33:48

down the road. So I think the real and this

33:50

is what I think really matters here too, like a

33:52

key part of your book's framework is

33:54

it's not merely that the Central American

33:57

countries have experienced state collapse and all

33:59

the different The problem is now people are showing up, it's

34:01

that at a literal level, US foreign

34:04

policy and domestic policy in some respect has

34:06

played a role in that situation. So like

34:08

taking us to the 1980s again then, I

34:11

think give this side of the story, which

34:13

is where this becomes a little more complicated

34:15

than a debate over like economic migration, which

34:18

obviously the US has a semi contentious relationship

34:20

with Mexico on those things, but like it

34:22

can be widely understood once again, as there

34:24

are single men who wanna make more and

34:26

we'll maybe move back. So yeah, help

34:28

us understand the Central American part. I

34:30

mean, this book is fundamentally

34:32

about the US and Central America

34:34

because until very, very recently, Central

34:37

American asylum seekers have posed

34:39

kind of the biggest challenge to the US asylum

34:41

and immigration system at the border. And so one

34:43

of the questions this book sets out to answer

34:45

is, how did that

34:47

situation come to be? Because

34:49

I think the greatest source of exasperation

34:51

to me and others who kind of

34:54

cover these issues is, everyone

34:56

tunes in from the

34:58

US border onward, often

35:01

not paying attention to all of the history

35:03

and geography that precedes that precise moment when

35:05

people show up at the US border. And

35:07

so for me, first of all, you

35:09

have a situation like what happened in 2014 and

35:12

from 2014 until really very, very recently, the

35:15

kind of story was about Central American seeking

35:17

asylum. How does that come to pass? The

35:20

story in the book is basically telling you how

35:24

year by year from the 80s

35:26

to the present, this reality

35:28

has come to pass. And it's the result of

35:31

a lot of things at once,

35:33

US foreign policy, US domestic politics,

35:36

immigration policy and politics. It's

35:39

created a situation in which, and this is to me

35:41

the most fascinating aspect of this from a reporting perspective,

35:44

the worlds of the US and

35:46

Central America are fully fused

35:48

together. And they've obviously always been,

35:51

the US is a major kind of pole

35:53

in the region. Of course, it's always gonna

35:55

be magnetic to people, but really

35:58

from the 80s, I would say on. a

36:00

special relationship form between the United States and

36:02

Central America where Lives

36:05

were truly blended between both

36:07

places People you

36:09

can't understand the way I've come to see

36:11

this is you can't really understand aspects of

36:14

American life without Thinking about

36:16

Central America and you certainly can't understand

36:18

key aspects of Central American life without

36:20

reference to the United States How

36:22

to say from America to find the United States Well

36:26

a huge portion of the immigrant population

36:28

in the US has come from Central

36:30

America Honestly, I mean, you know, Mexicans

36:32

have always been the largest the

36:34

largest Latino population in the US But not far

36:37

behind them were Salvadorans And

36:39

so, you know you had you have you

36:41

know Huge immigrant enclaves all

36:43

across the US west coast parts

36:45

of Texas East Coast of

36:48

Salvadorans Guatemalans Hondurans are

36:51

scattered in different places, but you basically

36:53

have the systematic buildup of you know

36:55

Real communities with deep ties and then

36:57

those ties grow more complicated by the

36:59

fact that you know Maybe some of

37:01

those people some of some of the

37:03

older members of these communities do

37:05

or don't have legal status But certainly their

37:07

children do so, you know There are a

37:09

huge number of mixed status families in America

37:11

where you might have parents or older siblings

37:14

who don't have legal status But

37:16

younger siblings and children who do You

37:20

know temporary protected status is

37:22

something that comes up a lot with

37:24

Salvadorans Guatemalans Hondurans This

37:26

is a status that has basically existed

37:29

since 1990 where People

37:32

have been able to live in the US at

37:35

Legally for two-year intervals every two years

37:37

They have to renew their status and

37:39

the idea is this was a pretend

37:41

a temporary form of protection That

37:44

could be extended as a result of you

37:46

know, an earthquake A civil

37:48

war any any number of kind of

37:50

had a cosmic events Now

37:53

you have you know hundreds of

37:55

thousands of Central Americans with TPS

37:57

living in the United States That's

38:00

been a political fight now for years until

38:02

trump both parties kind of agreed

38:04

that those populations were sort of best

38:06

left alone And the government just continually

38:08

renew tps for them During

38:11

the trump years that became much more contentious and trump

38:13

tried to cancel their tps status Then

38:15

you have this population in limbo. So you

38:17

have a huge segment of american life Um

38:20

that that lives this kind of

38:23

limbo reality And a

38:25

lot of it has to do with you know, the

38:27

civil war years in central america A

38:29

fifth of el salvador moved to the united states during the

38:31

civil war years. And so you have a situation in which

38:34

um, you know, the united states is

38:36

deeply involved in the civil war in

38:38

el salvador for a 12-year period from

38:40

1980 to And

38:44

during that time the u.s is creating

38:46

a new demographic Which is a demographic

38:48

of people fleeing that country for the

38:50

united states and so then it goes

38:52

in both directions You know

38:54

i'm sure you this is a this is a conversation

38:57

now that ironically trump has sort of brought into view

38:59

But it's a nice opportunity to

39:01

add some historical context You know

39:03

gangs like ms certain notorious Salvadoran

39:06

street gang like ms 13

39:08

started in los angeles In

39:10

the 80s didn't start in alsace didn't start

39:13

in central america Those were salvadorans

39:15

who relocated to the united states during the

39:17

civil war years Were kind of

39:19

brutalized in the inner city by existing gangs

39:22

They were kind of low on the totem pole having just

39:24

arrived They started to form groups in

39:26

their own in sort of a form of

39:28

self-defense that those groups got hardened over time

39:31

On you know the streets of inner cities in america

39:33

And then as they got deported and massed

39:36

back to central america that gang presence metastasized

39:39

And so that in turn in, you know fast

39:41

forward 20 years As that

39:43

gang grows and people flee violence perpetrated by

39:45

that gang you have more refugees showing up

39:47

at the southern border And so

39:49

that border dynamic is something that you can't really

39:52

understand in 2014 without reference to la in 1988

39:57

in this last section speaking of

40:00

generic centrist wisdom here.

40:02

My DC think tank urges are telling

40:04

me to say, okay, Jonathan, so if

40:06

there's a solution here, it's like a

40:08

Marshall Plan for Central America. Like if

40:10

it turns out that the United States

40:12

has some role relationship in this and

40:14

this border is complicated, maybe we should

40:16

just pour it and invest resources, insert

40:19

a trade deal, this, this, this, or that.

40:21

Why is that A, not a thing, but

40:23

why am I not crazy to suspect that

40:25

that probably wouldn't address some of

40:27

the underlying tensions, the problems we have here? Yeah,

40:31

I think there have been sort of smaller

40:33

scale efforts like

40:35

this during the Obama years,

40:38

there was this Alliance for Prosperity where

40:40

over the span of a few years,

40:42

there's something like $750 million went to

40:44

the region in an effort to do

40:46

good government reform and deal

40:48

with certain factors like climate change

40:50

and all the rest. It's

40:53

never amounted to much. I think there

40:55

are a few reasons why. And I

40:58

would be lying if I said I could give a

41:00

definitive account as to why. I think this

41:02

stuff kind of now defies a clean

41:04

accounting. It's just too many years of complexity.

41:07

But like I think one fact is, you know,

41:09

there is a cultural legacy to mass

41:12

migration between the US and Central America.

41:14

And you don't, once that is a fact of

41:17

life in different places, it's

41:19

not, that doesn't just go away. I

41:21

mean, there's a certain people's lives and

41:23

families are spread over these

41:25

different places. And so, you know, there are

41:27

even ways in which you can make life

41:30

more appealing in certain parts of Central America.

41:32

But in the United

41:34

States, there's too much of a presence already in certain people's

41:36

lives for it to ever be fully off the table. But

41:40

then I think the kind of more concrete answers to

41:42

your question are, you know, government

41:45

corruption is very complex and hard to root

41:47

out. It requires on the

41:49

US side, a kind

41:51

of shared sense of mission from

41:53

democratic to Republican administrations. And that's not

41:56

been the case. And so, you

41:58

know, take a very kind of, noted example

42:00

in Central America, there was a pretty

42:03

widely lauded anti-corruption

42:05

effort in Guatemala that actually

42:09

made major inroads in the country

42:11

in fighting corruption that was

42:13

a big project of the United States and

42:15

the United Nations, and under Trump, got completely

42:18

kneecapped. And that

42:20

wasn't just, I mean, some of that was Trump being Trump, but some

42:22

of that was also conservative Republicans

42:24

in the Republican establishment having

42:27

a certain unease with

42:29

the nature of that project. And so

42:31

it's very hard to root out corruption

42:33

that's built up over decades when there

42:35

isn't a kind of common denominator on

42:37

the US side as to which projects

42:39

are worse American money and

42:41

time and investment. So

42:44

there's that. There's

42:46

the fact that it's not just a function

42:48

in some of these countries of the corruption

42:50

of their governments, but also the business elite.

42:53

What role should the US have

42:55

in trying to sanction this collusion

42:57

between corrupt members of government and

42:59

an entrenched business elite? If

43:01

that's further complicated by the fact that

43:04

the US has a very troubled history

43:06

in this region, it's quite literally toppled

43:08

governments. It's not only aided and abetted

43:10

repressive governments, but like to stick with

43:12

the Guatemala example in 1954,

43:14

literally toppled a democratically

43:17

elected government. So there's also, we

43:20

do have to think twice before we kind

43:22

of suggest that the US just

43:24

kind of blithely get involved in these other countries

43:26

affairs. I mean, there's a checkered history there that

43:28

we need to be aware of. So

43:30

anyway, there are all these kinds of things.

43:33

And I think the kind

43:35

of bottom line is there isn't the political

43:37

will on the US side to deal with

43:39

this in a sustained way. There isn't a

43:41

clear constituency for it, honestly. The political parties,

43:43

certainly the Republicans benefit from board of a

43:45

chaos. And as we're seeing now, that is

43:47

an explicit part of their agenda. Democrats

43:50

are at best wishy washy,

43:53

at worst, contradictory and hypocritical

43:55

on certain aspects of immigration

43:58

aside on it. The Democratic Party itself. is

44:00

full of different segments that have different views on

44:02

this. And so I think

44:04

it's been very hard to basically have a

44:07

kind of real sense of mission here that look,

44:09

the best way to improve conditions would

44:11

be to invest money to partner with

44:14

foreign governments. That's something that's

44:16

going to take a decade, say, minimum. And

44:19

during that time, you have these acute political stressors

44:21

at the US border and beyond that have such

44:24

massive reverberations in the American political system that it's

44:26

sort of hard to get any government to stay

44:28

on point for long enough to deal with this

44:30

in a sustained way. So

44:33

it's just, I mean, again, I'm

44:35

overwhelmed myself. I mean, I spent a great deal

44:37

of my professional life now trying to wrestle with

44:40

this. And I don't know that

44:42

there's a single clear solution. What

44:44

I think would be more valuable would

44:46

be recognizing the

44:48

inevitability that we live in a

44:50

world defined by mass migration, and

44:52

that there need to be ways

44:54

of managing the flow

44:56

of migrants in both directions to

44:59

the US and back, rather

45:01

than trying to stop it outright. Now,

45:04

that sounds kind of sentimental and cheesy, but

45:06

actually has like a very set of a

45:08

very concrete set of policy options. The problem

45:10

is getting people to see

45:12

that and to fight that fight when

45:14

the political stakes are so high. So

45:17

two questions. And so one,

45:20

to what degree has busing

45:22

asylum seekers to Denver, Chicago, New

45:24

York City changed the politics of this?

45:27

Because that's honestly, I think within the

45:29

depth, it was a really brilliant, putting

45:31

a similarity debate, it was like a

45:33

brilliant move. Because I think

45:35

in ways that I don't suspect, like Greg

45:38

Abbott and like Ron DeSantis understood, it

45:40

really hit the center of the Democratic Party's coalition

45:42

on this issue, and put everyone kind of in

45:45

a weird place. So here's like what your kind

45:47

of perception of that issue has been. I

45:50

agree with you. I agree with you 100%. I think that

45:52

I think the busing has been

45:54

more than maybe any other factor

45:56

in recent days, recent years. Yeah.

45:58

As really change the

46:01

politics of this issue among Democrats. I mean,

46:03

the idea that you had keep Biden allies

46:05

in blue cities, most notably in New York

46:07

City, attacking the president for, I

46:09

mean, quote unquote, failing New York, you know,

46:11

things like that really

46:15

spooked the White House for one thing and

46:17

it's a real problem. I mean, we have to

46:20

call it, we can't pretend that it's not a

46:22

problem. I mean, it's a real strain on resources

46:24

for these cities. It's a real issue. There

46:26

isn't an obvious solution and what

46:28

it's effectively done is it's taken a border

46:31

issue and it's it's

46:33

it's it's magnified it and turned it into an

46:35

issue in the interior of the country. And

46:38

I think one of the reasons this

46:40

present moment is so interesting. I mean,

46:42

it's all sort of dashed by this

46:44

Republican gamesmanship in Congress. But what's so

46:46

striking about these negotiations right now that

46:48

are playing out in the Senate is

46:50

you have the White House and Democratic

46:53

Senate leadership at the table

46:55

with a willingness to make changes to the

46:57

asylum system that they wouldn't have touched years

46:59

ago. The idea that Joe

47:01

Biden just the other day, I mean, this

47:03

deal isn't hasn't even bit the details of

47:05

this current negotiation haven't even been announced yet.

47:09

I don't know what's going to happen with the

47:11

specifics of the deal, but we

47:14

do know some planks that have been agreed

47:16

on by both sides. The idea

47:18

that before the full kind of panoply

47:20

of things that have been agreed to

47:22

has come out and has been presented

47:24

by the negotiators themselves, that you would

47:26

have the president of the United States

47:29

who campaigned against Donald Trump's

47:31

inhumanity at the border and

47:33

towards immigrants in general, that he

47:35

would give a

47:38

preemptive statement on Friday saying,

47:41

this bill would allow me to shut the

47:43

border down if the numbers become overwhelming. And

47:45

I intend to do that as soon as

47:47

this bill is signed into law. The fact

47:49

that you would have a Democratic president again

47:51

who campaigned four years ago on the precise

47:53

opposite would be saying this

47:55

now as a way of proving that he's tough and

47:57

serious and trying to sort of flip the script on

47:59

Republicans. Is utterly striking and I

48:01

think is a real sign of how this passing

48:03

incident and how they continue numbers of the border

48:06

really are Posing real child serious challenges to the

48:08

Democrats quick question because this is

48:10

I have a lot of Republican Senate staffer

48:12

friends and they were very annoyed at that

48:15

Biden statement because Pushback

48:17

is like why can't you shut down the border

48:19

now? Why why does because as we've discussed there's

48:21

a whole set of issues with? Processing

48:23

and where do people go and all those

48:25

different issues? But those are kind of different

48:28

than people crossing over the

48:30

border and the fencing dispute Between

48:32

Texas and the federal government why can't

48:35

the by administration just say like hey I

48:38

must this isn't how you'd practically this but

48:40

why can't the Biden administration say hey like

48:42

we're just completely razor-wiring and placing You

48:45

know national guardsmen like every 20 feet

48:47

and no one's getting through it Why do why

48:49

does he need new new legislation to actually

48:52

shut it down? Well, I

48:54

mean the border to shutting down the border I've

48:57

never entirely clear honest than what on what that means

48:59

like are you shutting it down? Yes What

49:02

we're getting at is this is somewhat incoherent as

49:04

a concept I mean right so there

49:06

are two ways of answering that question and it's important

49:08

to have it I mean I I'm glad you asked

49:10

because it's like we got to hash this stuff out

49:13

So two ways of answering that I would say

49:15

first of all, you know a kind

49:18

of a general level They're to my mind

49:20

almost like two sort of fantasy scenarios that

49:22

you hear coming primarily out of Republican Congress

49:24

Which is one we need to detain everyone

49:26

who crosses illegally and two we need to

49:28

just shut the border down now the

49:31

first issue detaining everyone is physically

49:33

impossible and is Actually practically nonsense

49:35

and if you talk don't don't

49:37

take my word as like a

49:39

progressive minded writer person You know

49:41

talk to honestly ICE officers or

49:43

Border Patrol agents They

49:45

think that's ridiculous because they're dealing operationally with

49:47

the fact that there's just a limited amount

49:50

of space to detain people So then if

49:52

your goal is to detain everyone or even

49:54

to do what Republicans are calling for just

49:56

to tame single adult men Well,

49:58

then you might be releasing certain

50:00

people who, or

50:03

sorry, Republicans are saying detain families.

50:05

That's our problem, detain families. Well,

50:07

then who are you releasing in order to detain

50:09

those families? You're releasing single adult

50:12

men. I mean, it's just this constant trade

50:14

off. If there's no way to detain everyone,

50:16

it would require mammoth budgets.

50:19

And Republicans themselves aren't willing to authorize

50:21

those. So like, similarly,

50:23

when I hear Republicans say, well, just shut

50:25

down the border. I don't know

50:27

what it means to shut down a

50:30

border that is geographically

50:33

and topographically mountainous desert,

50:35

runs through water that is over 2000 miles long. There

50:43

are also ports of entry where

50:46

hundreds of thousands, millions

50:49

of people are passing

50:51

every day to conduct daily business.

50:54

What does that mean? Are you shutting that down? You

50:56

can't that would that would bring much of the economy

50:58

to a standstill. So there are these things, which I

51:00

just I just don't know what it means when they

51:02

say that. The to

51:04

then answer in the second kind of general category, what

51:07

does it meant when we've gotten

51:09

when the government has gotten as close to quote unquote shutting

51:11

down the border as possible? I think what

51:13

we've seen, what I understand the kind of

51:16

past incident of that to be was

51:18

this policy called Title 42, which

51:21

the Trump administration put into place at the

51:23

start of COVID in 2020. And

51:25

the idea was that they

51:28

invoke this obscure public health authority in

51:30

2020, to say that we have

51:32

to end asylum at the border. You know,

51:34

if someone shows up at the border, and we apprehend them,

51:37

we're not giving them a chance to lodge any kind of claim, we're

51:40

quite simply turning them around. We're expelling, we're

51:42

sending right back into Mexico, and or we're

51:44

deporting them to their home country. Um,

51:48

there's a lot to say about that

51:50

particular policy. But it

51:52

continued through the early years

51:54

of the Biden administration before it was eventually wound down.

51:57

During those years, there was a huge number

52:00

of people who continue to show up at

52:02

the border. It actually led to more repeat

52:04

crossings because people who in

52:06

the past would get detained, processed,

52:08

and either admitted or deported now

52:11

would just get pushed back into Mexico.

52:13

They had no reason not to try again.

52:15

So the numbers exploded. So here's the reason.

52:17

So the key thing is, it's not a

52:19

deterrent. Almost

52:22

literally the opposite. I mean, it's actually,

52:24

if anything, an encouragement for people to try

52:26

to cross multiple times, it brings more chaos

52:28

to the border than not. And

52:30

so this stuff doesn't map neatly

52:32

into, you know, that's one of the things.

52:34

I mean, it's very interesting from the Biden

52:36

perspective, because I think there was

52:39

real anxiety inside the upper reaches of the Biden

52:41

administration to let go of an authority like this

52:43

Title 42. Because ostensibly,

52:45

it's a silver bullet, right? You have a

52:47

political problem at the border. You know, your

52:49

poll numbers look terrible when there are huge

52:51

numbers of people at the southern border. You're

52:53

getting, you know, kicked around for it

52:55

politically. What you want to do is you want

52:58

to, you know, get these images off the news,

53:00

you want to clear the border as best you

53:02

can. This authority seems to give you that power.

53:05

But when you actually look at how it plays

53:07

out, it does the opposite. It just means more

53:09

and more people keep coming and cycling through trying

53:11

to cross. And then all the while, you're not

53:13

building up capacity so that there's only a limited

53:16

number of border agents you can have. By the

53:18

way, Congress has refused

53:20

to fund more border agents. Like

53:22

there are contradictions, most

53:25

specifically on the Republican side, I mean, on

53:27

both sides, but specifically on the Republican side

53:29

in this regard, where they refuse to increase

53:31

funding at the border. And then

53:33

they ask for these things that would require, you

53:35

know, I mean, to be totally

53:37

vigilant along the entire border require tens of

53:39

thousands of border agents. I mean, last

53:42

year, just to give you a sense. The

53:44

US government added, I believe it was

53:47

300 border patrol agents to

53:49

the entirety of United

53:51

States border patrol. That was

53:53

the first time the number had been increased since 2011. I

53:55

mean, just to hit these tests. ago.

54:00

But exactly. So, you

54:03

know, that that's

54:05

why I just think this stuff. I

54:07

don't know how you cut through the noise to

54:09

get at this kind of complexity. Because again, I

54:11

don't think I'm certainly not saying the Democrats

54:13

have the answers. I don't think really anyone has the answers,

54:16

if I'm being honest. And so I

54:18

don't I don't know how I'm using where it's like,

54:20

easier to be a journalist than a policymaker for sure.

54:22

Because I don't know, I don't know how you deal

54:24

with this. I mean, my kind

54:26

of naive hope with with like a book like

54:29

this, or with reporting is you can just try

54:31

to show people that this stuff

54:33

is complicated, that there are human lives

54:35

involved, that there's like a very complex

54:37

set of trade offs in every direction.

54:40

And that the political river does not match any of that.

54:43

But yeah, it's this stuff. I

54:45

certainly don't have the answers. No.

54:47

And just to make it personal

54:50

for a second, my uncle in law on

54:52

Facebook, posted a East South Carolina, he's very

54:54

conservative, posted a picture of people extremely across

54:57

the border, one of the things people probably

54:59

seen on Twitter. And he was

55:01

sort of like, Hey, to my liberal friends, like, why

55:03

is this okay? And very eloquent

55:07

phrasing, seriously, because it actually gets at

55:09

the difficulty of the political environment, I think, like

55:11

the work that you're doing. And I think in

55:13

this conversation, I think

55:16

from a good faith perspective, makes clear that

55:18

like, no one actually thinks that's okay. It's

55:21

just incredibly difficult. And

55:23

the awkward reality for him next year,

55:25

if President Trump wins,

55:28

is that he isn't quite going to have an answer to

55:30

it either, aka, we're going to be

55:32

in a circular situation, or, or and this is

55:35

the real problem with the Trump administration, how they handle this policy,

55:37

or any punitive measures they take are going

55:40

to be so just going too far the

55:42

other direction, that they're clearly going to provoke

55:45

a like pro migrant backlash, because that's literally

55:47

what we saw happen during the Trump era.

55:49

They were just unable to kind of find

55:51

whatever that like moderate center right position was.

55:53

And it said they let Stephen Miller take

55:55

the reins, then you can then see backwatches.

55:58

That's the difficulty. So here's the

56:00

final question here. The final question here

56:02

is, you really, in the

56:04

first chapter, make this very important point

56:06

that like, look, 2014, 2019, 2021, three

56:09

different administrations, escalating

56:14

crises. This is clearly

56:16

the trend that we're really seeing here. And when

56:18

you put that trend on top

56:20

of the fact that so much

56:22

of Western industrialized democratic politics broadly

56:25

been organized around immigration backlashes like

56:27

AFD in Germany, you know, Japan

56:30

and France, this is

56:32

just going to be probably be one of the

56:34

issues when people write about the first half of

56:36

the 21st century, like 100 years from now. Where

56:38

do you kind of see this ending? Where do you see

56:41

this going? This just seems to just be it. It's been

56:43

20 plus years. I mean, it's gotten, I mean, it really

56:45

has gotten worse and worse. You

56:47

know, this, this book also goes through the

56:49

different ways in which anxiety over immigration has played

56:51

out politically. I mean, from the 80s on, and,

56:54

you know, certainly it could go back much farther in history to

56:56

show the full sweep of this. You know,

56:58

I have to say it's you know, when you when you

57:00

when you pan out, and look beyond

57:02

the United States, you again, as you as you're

57:05

alluding to, you see, you know, England is struggling

57:07

with this, France is struggling with this, the European

57:09

Union is struggling with this, countries in

57:11

the Americas are struggling with this. I mean, it's

57:13

just, it's, it

57:16

is the, you know, my view of this

57:19

has always been that sort of this and

57:21

some degree of climate change are like the

57:23

will be the defining issues of our lifetimes.

57:27

And I don't I don't think that this issue is, I

57:30

mean, all all I'm seeing is

57:32

on the American side, is

57:35

the conversation getting narrower and

57:37

narrower, honestly. And

57:40

that that I think is maybe the most

57:42

alarming thing because the global trend is getting

57:45

more, it's getting faster and faster and increasingly

57:47

complex. And so the fact

57:49

that the kind of political discourse

57:51

is shrinking down into a

57:54

kind of willful myopia at a

57:58

moment when the world is historical

58:00

nature of this problem is just kind of

58:02

growing in significance. It scares

58:04

me. It honestly does. It's

58:07

a terrible thing to end on. I was

58:09

just going to say, actually here's what we'll

58:12

end on. This is a great book and

58:14

this is a great conversation. You shout out

58:16

the book. That's the positive note for listeners

58:18

is that if you weren't depressed to the

58:20

exit here, you can pick up the actually

58:22

really great, great, great book. Thank you so

58:25

much. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Hope

58:33

you enjoyed this episode. If you learned

58:35

something like this or mission or want

58:37

to access our subscriber exclusive Q&A, bonus

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