What's, what's the difference this time?

Yeah.

So the difference is last time they structured the, the fee as a travel ban, and I'll explain that really quickly.

That means if you are outside of the country hoping to come in on an H-1B visa, you're travel banned unless you can show proof that you've paid a hundred thousand dollars to the US government.

Now, there are a few problems with that.

One is, um, the government can't just create a new tax out of nowhere without Congress.

Another is that a court ruled that that was basically excessive, that that fee was excessive for the visa.

What do we know about that?

Can you talk a little bit about the various statuses and what they might be?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the fact pattern we've been seeing over and over at airports and, you know, maybe the lawyers can jump in here, too, but I'll try to say it in layman's terms.

Are these people who have never before been targeted by ICE really, especially in a systematic way? So they tend to be people who have come in under some kind of legal status.

So let's say they came in on a visa, on a work visa, on an au pair visa, something like that.

They've then applied for a different status, often a green card.

Maybe they got married.

immigration system that can take a long time to get answered back to people.

How big of a change is this from the existing rules?

I know it sounds small because the average college degree is four years, but most international students come to the US actually to go to graduate school, and a PhD program is most often five or six years.

This creates a huge amount of uncertainty around are you going to be denied midway through your degree? The other big issue is that student visas come with a really coveted perk called Optional Practical Training that allows international students to work on their student visas for anywhere from a year to three years.

It is a really big reason why international students come to the US.

They want the opportunity to be able to work at an American company and then maybe hopefully be sponsored for a longer-term visa.

This regulation basically says, "Once you finish your four-year degree, you need to apply again in order to take advantage of that OPT, and you could be denied."

Why take aim at students in particular?

The Trump administration think that the way that the current visa program is set up really promotes fraud, promotes people staying in the country longer than they should, that they'll come enroll in a US university and then keep prolonging their degrees because under the current system, their student visa is valid until they're no longer enrolled at a university.

What did they say in that memo?

Yes.

So importantly, they put out a memo.

It was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend when they love to drop big pieces of news.

There was a memo, but there was also a press release describing what the memo did.

And I think the press release really set off alarms because it said in no uncertain terms that most green card applicants would have to go abroad to apply for their green cards, that only people with exceptional circumstances would be allowed to apply for their green cards from within the country.

If that was indeed the case, if that's what they were going to go ahead with, that would have upended the way the immigration system has worked for decades, since roughly the 1950s and 60s, People who live here already, who are on visas, who have families, who have jobs, there's a reason Congress created a process for them to be able to apply for green cards without leaving the country, and this administration appeared to want to upend that.

What are you hearing, Michelle, with regard to who would more likely or less likely be a strong applicant for a green card, according to the Trump administration?

What has the reaction been in the White House to that information?

There are still many arrests happening, but it's not nearly as many as Trump promised.

President Trump himself have expressed, you know, "We went too far.

We need to pull back a little bit," and that's what we're seeing right now.

But certainly members of Trump's base are really upset about this because they think, you know, "This is a core promise you made.

Our voters are not gonna come support us if we don't fulfill this promise."

Thanks, Michelle.

Thank you.

And so what is it specifically that Democrats are demanding?

They want a few things.

Um, I would say their two biggest demands are that ICE shouldn't be allowed to wear masks to cover their faces, and the other big one has to do with judicial warrants.

Basically, there's this issue where ICE has said, "We've decided unilaterally," and they did so actually secretly.

They didn't even announce this policy change or even widely circulate it, but they said, "We're going to allow our officers to break into people's homes to look for an immigrant if that person has received an order of deportation."The problem is that the Constitution's Fourth Amendment says everyone, immigrants and citizens alike, have this protection against unnecessary search and seizure, and so typically you need a judge to sign a warrant to break into someone's house, and ICE was skipping that step.

And so Democrats wanted to write into the law, like, "No, you must actually go get a warrant if you wanna break into someone's home." Republicans and the White House in particular refused to sort of meet the Democrats' demands, and so DHS was allowed to shut down.

[gentle music] What does this mean for ICE, meanwhile, which has this mission of trying to deport people and now is having, even if it's a short-term detour at the airport?

It's such an interesting moment for ICE.

Th- those kinds of problems, are, were those unique to Kristi Noem? Is that something that she and Corey Lewandowski presumably invented, or is that something that predated her at DHS?

No.

This $100,000 sign-off is definitely a Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski special.

[laughs] Um, they, you know, instituted it a couple months into their tenure.

No explanation why, and it really created this huge backlog.

That CNN story, you know, showing that, that FEMA didn't have this sort of, like, tornado spotting technology is a really stark example.

But there were ways that they were actually getting in, in the way of the Trump agenda too.

It also seems like it's logistically, um, way more than they might have thought they were contending with.

Once she took the job, Michelle says Nielsen's camera-ready leadership style clashed with the culture at DHS.

I start calling around to people to see what they think of her, and I very quickly realize that people inside the department who, uh, who are not liberal, I mean, people who work in immigration enforcement, generally speaking, are fairly hawkish, are fairly sympathetic to the idea of deporting a lot of people.

Um, they were complaining that Kirstjen Nielsen was sort of standing in their way and showboating in a way.

One early anecdote that they shared with me that, that really became emblematic for me of how she runs the department is a few days after taking office, she went on an ICE raid.

And, you know, an ICE ra- the whole point of an ICE raid is that it's an element of surprise, right? You need to catch someone at their house as they're leaving.

And so if they know you're there, they're not gonna come out.

Well, Kirstjen Nielsen goes on this ICE raid in New York.

How would you say Kristi Noem handled Minnesota?

Michelle Hackman covers immigration for The Wall Street Journal and reported on the ongoing issues with Noem and DHS.

There has been frustration growing with Kristi Noem for months.

It all started, I would say, about a year ago, when these ads of Noem started appearing on places like Fox News.

They were prominent, glossy ads of her.

They looked like campaign ads of her saying, you know, encouraging people to self-deport.

Then there were announcements that raised significant security concerns, like the implementation of an airport policy where people without TSA PreCheck were permitted to keep their shoes on as they passed through security.

And those machines actually don't fully have the ability to scan shoes, and so she inadvertently created this new security gap in the system.

That was something that the IG investigated and found, and when Kristi Noem's office heard about it, instead of actually addressing the problem, they basically forbade the findings of the IG from being released.

Do we have a sense of what DHS is planning right now as far as future ICE operations, knowing that Noem wants to get big, flashy press opportunities?

Yeah.

I think it's sort of- it's become a misnomer that, like, we're gonna see less immigration enforcement.

[chuckles] I think this administration and everyone there is still hell-bent on doing numbers, right? They claim they wanna arrest a, a million people in a year.

That's sort of the number that they've come up with to do their mass deportation.

But I think you should expect to see fewer of those huge, flashy raids, like sending 3,000 agents to Minneapolis.

I, I think you should expect ICE to do more sort of methodical searches for people, going to people's homes, going to their workplaces, doing more workplace raids, and that's gonna be happening all around the country.

What else will you be watching for next with DHS and Kristi Noem?

We were using the best information we had at the time, seeking to be transparent with the American people.

[chuckles] And her top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, reaches out to Trump's pollster and says, "Can you cut an ad for us? We need to do...

We're desperate.

We need to do something." The idea was basically to, to cut some kind of ad that would make her look good, make her look strong, try to change the narrative away from these two killings in Minneapolis that she was basically taking the blame for.

She was met basically with silence.

Tony Fabrizio, Trump's pollster, didn't even respond to them, but he went and told other people that this happened.

[upbeat music] In that moment, Trump was feeling fed up with Kristi Noem.

Huh.

That's incredible.

incredible.... yeah, the w- I mean, the reports we've heard for months are that it's interesting, because it's not even necessarily huge policy d- disagreements between Kristi Noem and, you know, top ICE leadership, top, uh, border patrol leadership, but that her management style has been sort of so chaotic, and that she sort of prizes, ah, sort of, ah, you know, spectacle, TV spectacle, over, like, substantive immigration enforcement, that even her critics who are, like, hardcore, you know, fans of Trump's mass deportation policy have lost patience with her.

From sources you spoke to in the White House, I'm wondering, um, what's her standing in the administration?

So it's really interesting, because w- sources, you know, ah, tell us that at the White House, people are very broadly frustrated with her.

They don't like the spectacle.

They don't like...

You know, she's paid for these really expensive TV ads telling people that they should self-deport.

By the way, those ads are in English and run mainly on Fox News.

Did the backlash to the administration's policy play a role in the end of the surge?

Absolutely.

You saw the administration do an about-face.

They were proud of their work in Minnesota, I would say, pretty much up through the shooting of Alex Preddy in Minnesota a few weeks ago, and at that point, criticism of their operations boiled over.

It wasn't just Democrats.

It was coming from Republicans saying this looked too chaotic.

So they reversed course.

What is the economic impact expected to be after immigration agents leave?

What is an administrative warrant legally, and how is it different from a warrant signed by a judge?

Absolutely.

So an administrative warrant is basically a piece of paper that ICE or another similar agency produces that says, "We have reason to believe that this person is in the country illegally, and also that they live at this address," for example.

Um, a- and that sort of gives their own officers marching orders to go after that person.

Um, but it's, it's really important, I mean, I'm sure many of your listeners know that we have-- we and, you know, undocumented immigrants alike, have basic rights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure, and one of those longstanding rights has been that-... officers or agents can't break into our homes unless a judge, an independent judge, has reviewed the evidence and decided there's no other way.

Um, and, and ICE sort of has decided unilaterally, ICE and DHS, a- and by the way, they did so privately.

They wrote a secret, uh, legal memo that they didn't even share widely in their own agency, that says, "Actually, you don't need an independent judge's signature in these certain cases where people have a deportation order.

Can you take each of those briefly, Michelle, and then we're out of time?

What is an administrative warrant legally and how is it different from a warrant signed by a judge?

Absolutely.

So an administrative warrant is basically a piece of paper that ICE or another similar agency produces that says, we have reason to believe that this person is in the country illegally and also that they live at this address, for example.

And that sort of gives their own officers marching orders to go after that person.

But it's really important.

I mean, I'm sure many of your listeners know that We and undocumented immigrants alike have basic rights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure.

And one of those longstanding rights has been that officers or agents can't break into our homes unless a judge, an independent judge, has reviewed the evidence and decided there's no other way.

Can you take each of those briefly, Michelle, and then we're out of time? I

How have we seen that play out?

There are several ways, [laughs] but critics of ICE have always had this sense that it's a little bit of a rogue agency.

But I will say as someone watching ICE, in the past, even under the first Trump administration, largely speaking, the way ICE would operate was a little bit closer to a traditional police agency where they would put in a decent amount of police work before they'd try to go arrest someone.

They'd do some work to figure out, okay, we know this person is in the country illegally because they have a final deportation order.

They have this address on file with the government.

We know who they are.

We know where they live.

How about the private sector? As immigration agents enter businesses, are those businesses allowed to say, "You can't operate here"?

What happened during the Biden years?

You saw sort of a marginal around the edges, Trump and Biden both trying to tweak policies, you know, to make it so that people who, um, are paid better are getting H-1B visas as op- as opposed to people who are d- being paid lower than Americans, for example.

But I wouldn't say anything, like, particularly ideological happened with the H-1B under Biden.

But while Trump was out of office, this sort of tug-of-war that was happening in the first Trump administration went away, and the MAGA right was sort of allowed to, like, foment and cement its anti-H-1B feelings.

Say more about that.

Yeah.

So I mean, you know, Trump repeatedly makes these sort of pro-foreign worker comments.

He's basically pro H-1B visa.

What is that internal, uh, debate? How is that playing out?

Yeah, so it's really interesting.

It's over tactics, I would say, if I were to boil it down.

So ICE officers are, I mean, almost like trained police, and when they, when they go to make an arrest, they typically will do some advance work.

You know, is this person actually in the country illegally? Where do they live? What's the best time of day to go get them? A- and it's not that those don't ever lead to confrontations, they often do, but what we've seen these border patrol agents in these big cities, in Los Angeles, Chicago, you know, just this past couple weeks they've been in Charlotte, North Carolina.

What they do is they actually use profiling tactics.

I mean, they talk about this.

How effective are these new tactics that are being used at achieving the administration's goal of deporting the maximum amount of people they can?

So, this is like a big fuss over a relatively small program.

Yeah, I guess relatively small is sort of how you look at it, but I think the issue here, Sean, is that these are visas that go to some of the most high-profile companies in America that conservatives believe that should be hiring Americans instead of foreigners.

I mean, we're talking about Amazon and Microsoft and Google.

Actually, Tesla is one of the biggest users of the H-1B visa program.

And there are some legit complaints about it, too.

(instrumental music plays) A lot of these visas actually go to companies...

There's, there's sort of a whole business model that's sprung up around the H-1B visa of sort of IT companies who staff almost their entire companies with primarily Indian men on H-1B visas, and their model is that they do IT, you know, a little bit cheaper than a lot of company's in-house IT offices.

And I'm, I'm glad to see President Trump making the moves he's making.

Can you tell us what was said, what you've learned?

Yeah, so you know, according to people who were in the meeting, he was very aggressive with people, was saying, "You don't need to go develop law enforcement target lists.

Just go out there, arrest illegal aliens." That's exactly what he said.

"Go to 7-Elevens, go to Home Depots." And he, he looked around at the room, and he said, "I bet if I grabbed a few of you guys right now, we could go outside on the street and make 30 arrests right now." And he even did a show of hands, you know, "Who thinks, who here thinks they can do this?" And it was made really clear to people that not only were they being exhorted to sort of implement the president's agenda, but if th- they don't, that their jobs were on the line.

Mm-hmm.

... or, or taking their kids to school or something like that.

You know, one of my colleagues actually did a ride-along with some ICE officers in San Antonio, and she witnessed this man that they wanted to arrest, and they decided that the best way to do it was while he was driving his kids to school with his wife in the car.

You know, they decided they wanted to do it then because his wife was in the car, so maybe the wife could stay with the kids.

So, how are those groups being affected by recent policies? Talking about DACA recipients or people who are here under TPA, or TPS rather.

(laughs) Um, what the Trump administration is doing is systematically going through that population and trying to strip them of any deportation protections they might have.

So, they are systematically ending TPS protections for Venezuelans, for Haitians.

A lot of people came into this country on, um, a program called humanitarian parole, which listeners might be familiar with, which means technically they came into the country legally, they didn't cross illegally, and that comes with certain temporary protections.

You get a work permit for whatever the duration is, usually a year or two, you get deportation protections.

They are going through and attempting to take away that status from people, which ends up making them sort of that classic undocumented where they're vulnerable to being arrested and deported.

Do you have a sense of how that system is holding up right now?

Jennifer, it's, it's frankly completely breaking down.

Is there anything specific that the Trump administration is doing to prevent people from trying to cross the border illegally other than just to sort of send a signal that this is not a friendly place for immigrants to come anymore?

You're right.

He has really slowed down things at the border.

They had already really dramatically slowed in the final year of the Biden administration.

I would say the really big thing they did was that they ended a Biden program that didn't really have a catchy name.

People called it CBP One after the app that people used.

So Biden actually already said, "If you cross the border illegally, you're not gonna qualify for asylum.

What do we see as the administration's endgame on immigration, given that it has, as you point out, only been a few weeks, and they are sort of picking their spots to send a strong signal? Presumably this is all building up to something? Where, where is it going?

What are you seeing?

Yeah.

So we're seeing a lot of cases, and it's tough, Ayesha, because the government in many cases is unwilling or unable to give us all the facts in the case.

But what we're seeing is people with relatively minor visa issues, so let's say they're on a tourist visa and they're house-sitting for someone.

Another example, someone who's a fiance of a US citizen coming in on a tourist visa and border officials saying, "Wait a second.

That's illegal.

You should be on a fiance visa." You know, in the past border officials would say, "Okay, there's a problem with your visa.

Is that legal? Is it legal for border officials to go through people's phones?

So the Biden administration decided to expand the use of humanitarian parole and used it as the basis of a program called Uniting for Ukraine.

And the deal was if you apply in advance, so, you know, the government has a chance to vet you, and you find an American to sort of financially sponsor you, take you in, be your guarantor in some way, then the government would give you travel permission to fly to the US and live here for a grant of two years.

Are there any court challenges to these moves by the Trump administration?

There is a lawsuit filed to try to stop Trump from ending this program, and in some cases, the court has said, you know, even though a program is illegal, some of the people who rely on it, you know, it's, it's unfair to take that away from them. And so it's, it's possible that a court could rule that way, but we just don't know yet. You know, we are here having this debate about whether this program is legal, whether the Biden administration had the authority to use it, but to me, the really salient thing is these are people who went really far out of their way to do things the right way and to follow all the rules. They didn't break any laws by coming into the country, and so it's, it's completely sort of changing the set of laws on them sort of with no notice.

Give me an example of one of those little poison pills or whatever, however you'd phrase it.

So, there was one tucked into an executive order that said they were going to bring back an immigrant registry,It's a law from 1940 that, in fact, does say anyone in the country illegally needs to register with the government, provide their home address, provide other information like their fingerprints. And if they don't, they can face jail time and a big fine. You know, older people actually can recall watching TV and seeing these sort of, uh, these ads on TV that would tell people, "Remember," you know, "remember to register." And it was not just people here illegally. It was anyone who was not a citizen had to go register every year, provide their updated address. For the first time, Trump has decided to bring back that registry, and it's a pretty clear message. I mean, he's saying, "Come register with the government, so we have your address and we can come deport you. And if you don't register with the government and we find you, then we can throw you in prison and fine you and also deport you."

That's a Venezuelan gang.

Exactly. It's this sort of violent Venezuelan street gang that has started appearing in the United States in the last two years. Um, and, and I should say, I mean, the gang is really violent. They have committed murders in the US. They've gone after police officers. I mean, they are, in- generally speaking, not good news. (laughs) But it's, it's obviously hard to know who is Tren de Aragua because there was such a large influx, uh, you know, such a large Venezuelan migration to the US during the Biden administration, and a small number of these gang members came as part of that mass migration. Um, you know, it was, it was a sympathetic story. They were fleeing from an autocracy. They've sort of been able to flip the script and say, "These people are violent. They're not good people. We're gonna go after them. You know, their country isn't taking them back, so we've gotta take extraordinary measures." It's become a good political message for them. And so, I, I knew all along that they were going to probably want to use this proclamation to target Venezuelans, um, and that's exactly what happened. We heard on Saturday that a plane load... We, we didn't even know who, but a plane had gone from the US to El Salvador. And soon after that, we saw this video that the Salvadoran president had posted of these people, um, sort of getting unloaded off planes, getting their heads shaved, et cetera.