Krish, can you just share a little bit of your family story and how you come to this and how you understand the notion of what a refugee is?

So my family, uh, is Hindu, um, and Tamil.

Um, and, uh, so I was born in Sri Lanka.

Um, and as a result of the ongoing civil, civil strife, because the minority was persecuted, my parents very quickly knew that they needed to leave the country and really seek refuge, any country that would receive them.

Uh, my uncle had, you know, sponsored all of his brothers and sisters.

Um, but, uh- You know, had to come here to the US as a neurosurgeon.

Um, and we of course hadn't heard anything, so my parents were really desperate and were willing to go any country that would take us.

And instead of utilizing the things, including faith traditions that bind us, to try and choose the opposite as an approach to daily decision-making that actually affect everyone regardless of whether or not you are a newcomer to this country or not.

Is, is that something, Chris, you've noticed from, from this World Cup, that the multinational element, the global diaspora element of, of this tournament?

Absolutely.

And I think that is what the World Cup is able to showcase like no other competition.

Which is that the talent, the fierceness, the fearlessness, uh, that some of these athletes are showing on the field, um, are what so many of these families show and experience, um, uh, off the field.

And I think that is why it is so incredible to use this as an example to highlight, um, you know, the circumstances of just, you know, a few of these families.

But what they represent are a global dynamic.

And, you know, that's why I think I'm so grateful to shed light on this because sometimes we think of these families as, um, the most vulnerable.

Tell us more about the number of people coming to the US, US right now in need of help, right now and in recent years as well.

Do you agree? Do you see this argument being made by the Haitian community? What have you seen?

Well, it's incredibly difficult when you hear the kind of offensive language that was used to describe Haiti, the accusation altogether unfounded that Haitians were eating cats and dogs.

It certainly raised a legitimate equal protection claim.

And unfortunately, the majority concluded that it was unlikely to succeed because the government, they said, offered a race neutral approach.

explanation, which was that the administration opposes TPS as a program.

It is true that this administration has been clear that they don't like TPS.

They've attacked it when it's come to 13 of the 17 countries that have it.

What are your thoughts?

Does this mean they're automatically undocumented, illegal? Do they have to leave? Are they still allowed to work? Are they still allowed to use their driver's license? What happens now?

Yeah, so they are losing their legal status, which allowed them to remain in the U.S. until conditions in their home country changed.

It means that they lose their work authorization.

So that is, I think, why lawmakers across the spectrum have acknowledged that removing these workers and so abruptly will have severe economic consequences.

In terms of what comes next, this is something we're actually trying ourselves to discern.

There is a six-month effective date from the termination notice to when they would lose their status and need to leave.

But even this may go back to a court to decide in terms of what the administration, kind of how severely they want to go after these individuals.

Is that right? And or undocumented?

So what does that mean for people actually on the ground with TPS?

It's incredibly hard because it means that their future is uncertain, and that impacts over 1.3 million TPS holders who are already here in the United States.

And even though the country conditions in their home country are still incredibly dangerous, when you remove that status, they are then vulnerable to deportation.

Can you tell me anything more about that or the odds that it is successful?

Well, what has been interesting is the congressional pathway to designate TPS for a country.

So there actually was a bill that was passed by the House with some strong bipartisan support, specifically for Haitians.

It was introduced in the Senate last week, and so it will be interesting to see whether Congress decides to act in response to the administration revoking the status.

And so we are advocating to our stakeholders that country conditions in Haiti remain incredibly dangerous.

What kind of conditions will people face if and when they do go back?

It's an important question because it is absolutely dependent in part in what's happening in these countries.

But today's ruling is also bigger than the conditions in Haiti and Syria.

So by any objective measure, as you mentioned, the conditions are horrendous.

Our own State Department has a level four, do not travel, advisory.

Neither country is safe.

So this is about whether anyone can hold the government accountable when it makes a life threatening decision of this magnitude and the Supreme Court just said largely no.

You know, my question to you is now, what is the future of TPS for all the other countries beyond Syria and Haiti that have this status?

But what do we miss when we fail to see migration, refuge, and so many of these other policies as part of U.S. foreign policy?

Yeah, I think that's such an important framing question because immigration has never been purely a domestic issue, even when Washington wants to treat it as one.

You know, every decision we make about who is welcome here sends a signal to the world about who we are.

And immigration policy reflects what I would say are our foundational values and moral leadership globally.

You know, how we treat people fleeing violence and persecution is one of the clearest reflections of who we are as a nation.

And when the U.S. upholds its values.

humanitarian commitments, we show the world that American leadership is grounded not only in power but in principle.

What do you see as the strategic cost of that framing to the U.S. position in the world, to U.S. foreign policy, and also national security policy?

Yes.

These are people, um, our own government invited here after a rigorous years-long vetting process.

But earlier this year, the administration launched an initiative called Operation Paris, in which over 5,000 of these lawfully admitted refugees in Minnesota, which has obviously been a target of the administration, were ar- Many were arrested without warrants.

Uh, they were detained.

They were flown using taxpayer dollars to detention centers in Texas for reinvestigation.

In one particularly egregious case, agents arrested a nursing refugee mother from Myanmar, and even though she had an active legal status, she was transferred hundreds of miles away, um, separated from her five-month-old US citizen.

And I think just the difference of what we're seeing now, in the first term-Devastating stories of harm and public outcry may have at least served as speed bumps, but it's different now.

The rest of the world is deciding that the United States is not friendly, which is great to other countries that don't have these ridiculous immigration issues.

If you can explain, who are the thousands of refugees all approved to come here, many fleeing persecution in their own countries, but their flights canceled? And then groups like yours, what this means that you've got a stop work order?

I appreciate that question because I do think there's a lot of confusion and conflation around this issue.

And I think people are throwing around the word illegal unfairly.

So refugee resettlement is a system through which individuals, families cross an international border.

They apply through the United Nations or the U.S. embassy.

They wait literally years to go through extreme vetting.

so CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Interpol, in order to go through these background checks, health clearances, only when they have cleared those hurdles are they admitted to the United States.

So explain for the Afghan allies, I mean, for the people coming from Afghanistan, these were the ones who risked their lives helping U.S. troops, helping saving U.S. soldiers' lives in Afghanistan?