Immigration and Migration

This event was part of the 2025 CFR Local Journalists Workshop, which is made possible through the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. TRANSCRIPT LABOTT: Everybody hear me OK? How we doing? Good? I’m Elise Labott. I’m the Edward R. Murrow press fellow here at the Council on Foreign Relations. I’m thrilled to be here with you, as we all are here at CFR. I was telling the discussion group earlier that I started out as a local news journalist. And it was just an amazing experience getting to know all the communities that I was—it was a hyper—it was hyper local, a few communities. But I can’t think of a better group to be able to help translate these complex foreign affairs and global issues to your audiences right now. You know that there’s so much attention right now being put to local news. And I think local news is really having a moment. And so we’re thrilled here to be able to work with you on that, and look forward to this discussion on covering deportation and immigration stories. We have an excellent panel here with you. We have Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Laura Collins, director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute; and Rose Cuison-Villazor, professor of law and chancellor’s social justice scholar at Rutgers Law School. Their fuller bios are in your notebooks. I’m going to ask—about a half-hour we’re going to have a conversation. And then, once again, we’ll open it up to your questions. And I’m sure this is an issue that you have a lot of questions on. So we hope to hear from you not just about what you’re interested in, but, you know, feel free to tell us how you’re covering the immigration and deportation stories. And I think this is an excellent opportunity for everyone to share tips, best practices, and how you can all stay connected after the day to cover the deportation and immigration story. So let’s kick it off with Rose. Rose, there’s a lot of talk about, you know, the legal authorities surrounding immigration, and ICE, and detaining and deporting, right? Let’s set the scene here for immigration what the legal authorities are, what they actually encompass, and where the constitutional limits lie. Because I think this will really help us all understand the baseline legal framework we’re working within. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Great. Thank you. And I’m really happy to be here today. Thank you for including me. That’s a great question. And it’s really helpful to understand the legal landscape of the immigration powers of not only the president, but also ICE—and Customs Enforcement officers, also known as ICE. The U.S. Constitution would be a good place to start. It provides that Congress shall have the power—has the power to pass immigration and naturalization laws, naturalization laws in particular. But the Supreme Court specifically said that although the term “immigration law” does not appear in the Constitution, because the United States is an independent sovereign nation it has the power to pass its own immigration laws to decide who can come in, right, who can immigrate, who can stay, who can become a U.S. citizen, or who can be deported, right? So the Constitution provides that grounding. LABOTT: And Congress passes the laws. CUISON-VILLAZOR: And then Congress passes the law. And Congress, in 1952, passed a statute that continues—that is still valid to this day, the Immigration and Nationality Act. And that sets forth the baseline powers of Congress and the president to determine the rights of noncitizens, the powers of immigration courts to decide on whether they can be removed or otherwise allowed to stay, and the ability of noncitizens to become U.S. citizens. So these are the basic framework for the enforcement and regulation of immigration. But then to go back to the Constitution, and I don’t know if you wanted me to start going there, just in terms of laying the—providing the legal landscape, we’ve got the Constitution, on the one hand, that protects individual rights of all persons, right, citizens, noncitizens, that needs to be examined against this larger framework too that Congress passed with respect to the regulation and enforcement of immigration. LABOTT: And then that’s one we’ll talk a little bit later about, due process. Laura, you’ve written about the distinction between federal immigration law and state, local enforcement. So as we’re kind of, you know, setting the scene here, and what for the journalists should be looking for in understanding the basic legal framework, let’s understand how these so-called 287 agreements work with—and what journalists should know when they’re asked to cover stories in their communities. COLLINS: Yeah. So I think one of the things that’s important to remember when you’re talking about immigration enforcement is the vast majority of this power is with the federal government. But state and local law enforcement have a really important role to play. And, depending on who you talk to as a policy expert, some people will say that’s a horrible idea. You know, local law enforcement doesn’t understand immigration law. They can’t possibly enforce that. But they still have a role to play. Sometimes people who are foreign born get in trouble with the law. Sometimes they are convicted of crimes. And federal immigration enforcement doesn’t always know who they are. And so state and local law enforcement does have an important role to play, because they are policing all of us not just native-born people. It does get sticky though when you start talking about deputizing local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws. And these things that you mentioned, 287(g) agreements, they’ve existed for a really long time. And it’s a mechanism by which the federal government can deputize local law enforcement. They give them some training. And then, depending on how they structure the agreement, those local law enforcement agencies are able to then work closer with the federal government on immigration enforcement. They’re not all necessarily bad. I think there is a tendency sometimes when we talk about immigration enforcement to think of all of these as automatically a horrible thing. There are degrees to this. Sometimes this is really necessary. Sometimes it’s not. And a lot of it is in the execution. But as you’re reporting on these stories, this is going to come up more and more for you because a lot of law enforcement agencies across the country are signing these agreements. I think it’s record numbers, actually, in this administration, are signing up to do this. We see a lot of this in Florida, actually. A lot of it in Texas. This is something that it’s highly technical. You’re going to hear about it more and more over the next four years. LABOTT: OK, let’s talk a little bit about the economic impacts. And, Ted, you know, when reporting on some of these mass deportation proposals, let’s start—you know, set the scene with the key economic kind of data points journalists should be looking for here to see the economic impact. ALDEN: Yeah. So there’s a—there’s a variety. I mean, one that we are seeing the impact of already is reduced travel to the United States. We’ve seen this particularly from Canada. It’s not just immigration and deportation related, though there have been some very high-profile cases of Canadian citizens arrested at the border and put into ICE detention that have had very prominent play there. So that, on top of the anger over the president’s tariff policies, we’ve seen a sharp drop, about 35 percent at the land border and sharper air travel, into the United States. Canada is the largest single source of tourists in the United States, so tourism-related businesses, you know, most prominently in the northern border states, but this is affecting Florida, and California, and other places. So I would look for that. Same thing along the southern border, sort of day-to-day travel. So there’s a there’s a big border enforcement element to this. There has been a real crackdown on foreign students, revocation of student visas. Foreign students are a very important source of revenue for universities. They’re important for the communities that they’re in. There is a palpable state of fear among foreign students right now, lawyers advising students on visas maybe not to leave the country because they might not be able to get back. We’re going to see that, I think, almost certainly in the enrollments in the fall. So there’s going to be impact on universities. And then, you know— LABOTT: Yeah, let me—let me ask you—let me ask you about that. ALDEN: Yeah, go ahead. Please. LABOTT: Because you’ve researched the, you know, foreign students’ economic contributions. How can our audience of local journalists quantify that economic impact? Because, as you said, international students are going to stop coming to their local universities, whether it’s increased scrutiny, whether it’s lack of visas. How do you—how do you write about that? ALDEN: So an excellent source of information on that—and, to be clear, it’s an organization that is lobbying on behalf of universities that want to admit foreign students. So it’s not entirely unbiased. But it goes by the acronym NAFSA, N-A-F-S-A. And they are doing regular research, both on the numbers of students coming in and on their local economic impact. For a lot of the universities the foreign students are valuable because they pay higher tuition rates. And so as there’s been significant funding cuts to state-funded universities, like our universities here in Washington state where I’m at, the foreign students are an important source of that. I don’t think you really capture the economics just by looking at those numbers. I’ve been involved in a lot of research, and there’s a lot of good research out there, on the long-term economic contributions of foreign students. I mean, one in every two Silicon Valley startups has a, you know, foreign entrepreneur—foreign-born entrepreneur as part of those, most of them having attended U.S. universities. So there are a lot of knock-on effects that go beyond just the immediate economic impact. So I think the student one’s important. Just quickly, and I know we want to move on, we are going to start seeing—it’s early days still—but local business impacts. I mean, there are raids at workplaces. We had a big one up here in Washington state at a local roofing company. So there are sectors of the economy, construction being very important, agriculture, particularly, you know, fruit and vegetable kinds of crops in California and Florida, apples here in Washington state, that rely heavily on immigrant labor. And you’re seeing, you know, some combination of actual arrests and deportations, plus people scared of going to work because they’re reading the stories about the immigration enforcement actions. So you’re already seeing that kind of business impact. I think that’s going to grow steadily over the course of this year and beyond. LABOTT: Yeah. I mean, Laura, you mentioned that in Texas there’s this disconnect between the political rhetoric and real communities’ concerns about the deportation. So what economic impacts should local journals be covering in their communities? Because, you know, the obvious sectors, as Ted said, are agriculture, construction. But as we heard this morning there are services, there are other sectors that could, you know, really have local communities feeling the pinch. COLLINS: How many of you have a labor shortage in your community? And probably most of you in construction, right? We see that a lot. How many of you are in a rural area that doesn’t have enough doctors or nurses? Yeah. LABOTT: Or lawyers. COLLINS: Or accountants. I mean, there’s— LABOTT: Or teachers. Or teachers. COLLINS: There’s communities that don’t have enough accountants, right? So this is something that, you know, when we think about immigration, the legal immigration system in the United States already doesn’t bring in enough workers to fill the open jobs we have. It’s certainly not geared toward the economics of the people that we need in terms of skills, because it’s primarily family based. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just not as optimal for the economy. But if we—if the legal side of this already doesn’t bring in enough people, and then we decide we’re going to remove a bunch of folks who are working, who are here, you’re going to have really big gaps, unless Congress is willing to modernize that immigration system in a way that’s going to start filling those open jobs. And you’re going to see that in a real way in your communities. Unfortunately, a lot of the numbers on this are very macro. We see a lot of this on, you know, national-level numbers. But some of your states already have those numbers, and they exist. You know, like in Texas, one in five workers is foreign born. It’s huge. If we start seeing not only people being removed at high numbers, but also this chilling effect of folks not wanting to actually come to the United States, or there was the executive order about enhanced vetting, we start slowing down green cards again like we did during COVID, you’re really going to start to see increasing labor shortages. It is going to impact productivity, not just at the national level. It will be in each of your communities. And so that economic case is—I think it’s hard for people to wrap their brains around, right? They think it’s a one in, one out. Very few people, though, would have an objection to someone from another state moving in, right? That would be something that would be good for the economy. That’s great. People are moving into my community. You might not like the way they drive, but you’re happy to have people want to join and make your community more vibrant. And it’s the same way when you’re talking about bringing in immigrants. Challenges are a little bit different, but these are things that you’re going to start seeing even more of if we continue to have this slowdown in migration, and combined with high numbers of removals. LABOTT: And don’t forget what we heard this morning on the trade panel that these are not just kind of manufacturing jobs, or construction, or agriculture. They’re also—we have a huge service industry, right? So we’re talking about doctors, and teachers, and nurses— COLLINS: Hospitality. Hospitality too. LABOTT: Engineers. Engineers, hospitality. And so maybe, like, local chambers of commerce, school districts, employers, those are all good—those are all good places to find those numbers. Rose, you’ve written about ICE kind of exceeding its local authority here with all of these deportations. Let’s talk about the red flags journalists should watch for that indicate potential violations of due process in their communities. Because, you know, unless we hear about one case here, you know, the Abrego Garcia case, or one case there, it’s really hard to kind of spot widespread lack of due process, I would think. CUISON-VILLAZOR: I’ve actually really appreciated the work that local journalists have done in highlighting some of these human stories that we’ve seen, from Rümeysa Öztürk, who was picked up, right, as she’s a Tufts University student who was picked up by masked ICE agents and then detained. And she was recently released. And then Khalil Mahmoud, who was also stopped—or, he was detained, and he’s still detained right now. Those are—the ways that local journalists have highlighted these human stories and violations of their due process rights is really helpful. So please keep doing that. Let’s talk about due process rights of noncitizens and U.S. citizens, because these rights apply to all. The U.S. Constitution says that everyone before they’re detained, before they can be imprisoned, should be able to see a judge to be able to hear the basis for their crime or the basis for—in the non-citizenship case—the basis for why they are being removed by the U.S. government. In the examples that we’ve seen so far, we’ve clearly—we’ve seen clear violations of due process rights, where people are picked up without even an arrest warrant. Turns out that was the case with Khalil Mahmoud. That there was not even an arrest warrant for him, and yet he was hauled off his home, the building, and then detained from New York to Louisiana. And so he, like Ms. Öztürk, like some of the other individuals who have been picked up, should have been presented with an arrest warrant letting them know why they’re being arrested, or what’s called an NTA, a notice to appear. An NTA tells a noncitizen that the government is trying to remove you, and so you need to appear before a court. The Immigration and Nationality Act that Congress passed in 1952 lays out these various types of procedures. And then there’s also regulations that further explain what ICE officers should be doing. And so it’s really important to show—to tell these stories of how people are just being separated—going into people’s homes without a search warrant. There’s a search warrant that’s required. LABOTT: Who’s been covered—who’s covered a case of a deportation without a search warrant? Or—tell us—do we have a mic? It’s OK. We’ll come back to you. But I think what would be good is if we kind of weave in a little bit—sorry, Irina. I should have mentioned it. It was kind of a spontaneous thing. But I think it would be good if we kind of bring up some of these examples and talk about, you know, some of the cases that we’re seeing. Why don’t you stand up and tell us your name, and where you’re from, and your paper or news organization, and your case? Q: Hi again. (Laughs.) I’m Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton. I’m the immigration reporter at the Denver Post. And there’s—I mean, they’ve been keeping me really busy since our ICE raids started on February 5. So there’s a number of them. But I’ll start with those particular raids. So they were residential. They hit several apartments, including the ones that Trump had targeted in his speeches about Operation Aurora, that were supposedly taken over by Venezuelan gangs. And so they were door knocking. So they didn’t have a warrant with, like, a specific name on it, or perhaps they had a warrant with one person’s name on it, and then used that as a way to get into the apartment building and start just door knocking, asking people to show ID. And that happened at three different apartment buildings. But the issue that I’ve had with ICE is the fact that they’ve just been completely stonewalling us as reporters. If we can get comment from them at all, it’s usually a canned statement that they repeat. So—and I think that’s a top-down directive. But you had asked for best practices. And so something that I wanted to share with anybody who wants to do, like, deeper immigration reporting, is that in order to interview someone who is detained in an ICE facility, normally you go through the process of, like, requesting that interview through ICE. That’s just not going to happen today. So instead, if you’re able to connect with, like, the family members, or the lawyer, or, like, the friends of someone who’s detained, they can call you from the facility. And they just wait in line at the pay phone. So you can have, like, the family member or the lawyer pass them your number, and they can call you. Because that’s how I’ve been doing interviews with detainees. Because you’ll never—you’ll never get that request approved through ICE. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Thank you. Q: Yeah. No problem. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Thank you. LABOTT: We’ll go to one more quickly, and then, Ted, I want to talk about employer raids. Q: Hello. Erika Slife with the Chicago Tribune. I’m an editor, but my team oversees immigration. And during the ICE raids in a suburb they were knocking on a door. The family was saying, no one’s here. We want to see a warrant. Somehow the door was opened and they pulled them out. And so I never was able to get an answer if that was legal or not. CUISON-VILLAZOR: It’s illegal. Q: They pulled them out. It was on video. And they ended up arresting the father, even though they were looking for the son, who was wanted. He had an outstanding warrant for attempted murder. But they ended up picking up his dad. And a comment was made by one of the ICE agents, allegedly, “we have to take someone.” CUISON-VILLAZOR: Yeah, can I just respond to that quickly? LABOTT: Yes. Please, please, please. CUISON-VILLAZOR: I don’t know enough of the facts to see whether that’s illegal, but it’s interesting that they were looking for one person but then arrested somebody else. Yes, they have quotas, right? They need to meet their quotas. But also, right now there’s an executive order that was passed—that was issued, that said that even if they’re looking for a particular person, they’re looking at friends and families—those who accompany that particular target. And that’s why it’s also critical to know—for ICE to know where people are going, what work they’re going to, what church do they go to, what schools. Because even if they’re targeting one person they can follow the group and be able to say, they must be noncitizens. And then we’re going to pick them up. LABOTT: Yeah. And I would—I would think, like, in your communities—and this is also a good story—like, just the fear—the fear that people are, you know, leaving house, going to school, going to church, going to work. Ed—Ted. Sorry, Ted. ALDEN: No worries. LABOTT: You’ve mentioned increased employer raids. Talk about what journalists should know about workplace enforcement actions. And how can they report on these while protecting vulnerable sources? ALDEN: It’s a really good question. I would actually be interested in hearing from some of the—some of the journalists on how they have been handling this. In the past, employer raids were reasonably rare. There were some high-profile ones in the Bush years, in the Obama years, even saw it occasionally under Biden. But generally speaking, ICE has not used that as a primary strategy. We have seen some here locally in Washington state. I don’t have a sense yet of how widespread this is as a tactic. In some cases, they actually appear to have targeted people who’ve been outspoken. We have a farm worker here in Skagit County who was a leader of, essentially, the local Farm Workers Union, who was clearly targeted personally in one of these raids. I mean, the raids tend to be quite high-profile events. ICE often wants coverage. So I think, you know, source confidentiality is not as big an issue in those—in those cases. I will be interested to see how much the Trump administration goes for this tactic, because it is a tactic that is likely to generate strong local opposition. I mean, a lot of the arrests are taking place quite quietly. They’ve been reported well on in a lot of cases. But the workplace raids are very high profile, tend to get a lot of press attention, tend to often create some anger among local employers. So I’m still in a kind of watch and see mode on that, even though, you know, as I say, locally here, we’ve had a couple of high-profile raids. LABOTT: Right, and I think we heard earlier today, like, these high-profile—it’s not really dealing with the immigration problem, because they’re just one or two. But it’s designed to evoke fear—again, back to that fear. And there are a lot of also issues that you might want to examine about where is the line between the First Amendment and people speaking out and a farm worker, you know, his right to kind of speak out in assembly, versus the law which basically says that people that—whether they’re undocumented or—we’ll talk about the language after—but whether they’re undocumented or here on a visa, there are certain restrictions about not engaging in political activities. And where does that line—maybe we could talk a little bit about that after. Anybody cover a workplace raid recently that became a big story? Anybody? OK. COLLINS: Can I add something on the workplace raids? LABOTT: Yeah, I want to— COLLINS: I think one of the important distinctions on workplace raids is that this administration has spent a lot of time telling everyone in the public that they’re arresting criminals. And there is a lot of truth to that. But there were big raids in Washington, D.C. And they got about a bunch of dishwashers and restaurant staff. And of those, only a handful had outstanding warrants for criminal activity. The rest of them were people who had immigration law violations, which are not criminal law. And so they can categorize them as criminals. It’s not necessarily true, even if they have violated immigration law. And it’s kind of a wonky distinction between civil and criminal law, which you know well because you’ve talked about this before too, I’m sure. The public might not make a distinction. It’s an important one legally. And it changes kind of how their cases move through different courts. But I do think it’s worth reiterating, to the extent you can, that factual difference between, you know, people who actually have outstanding warrants for actual crimes committed versus immigration law violations. LABOTT: Laura, you mentioned— ALDEN: Elise—sorry, Elise, can I have—no, go ahead back to Laura. LABOTT: Go ahead, Ted. No, go ahead, Ted. ALDEN: I wanted to add some—I wanted to add something on Rose’s due process comments, because it’s quite interesting, I think. And we’re seeing more of this. It’s important for reporters, particularly anywhere in border communities, to know that the ordinary Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure do not operate in border communities. The court decisions, such as they are, have recognized the power of border agents to check for a variety of things—unlawful status, drugs, other things—within a 100-mile district of the border. That’s the way in which these interior checkpoints, for instance, twenty-five miles from the border, that’s why legally they are allowed to operate, and pull cars over, and search them without probable cause. My sense in this administration is you’re going to see that exercise of powers expanded substantially. We’ve had here in our community for the first time exit checks taking place at the border. So cars leaving the United States that are being checked by Customs and Border Protection agents on the U.S. side of the border. That used to be an extremely intermittent thing, usually when they had some reason to believe there was criminal activity taking place. What you saw in Portland in in some of the protests, I don’t remember whether it was last summer or the summer before last, you saw plainclothes Border Patrol agents operating in the Portland community. Again, technically, that’s a border community because it’s within one hundred miles of the U.S. frontier. So reporters, particularly anywhere in these border communities, I think there are stories about the misuse of powers in those communities. But, for better or worse, the courts so far have recognized these rather more extreme powers in the border districts. So just in addition to what Rose was saying on due process. LABOTT: Yeah, good point. Laura, you mentioned that Congress has punted on immigration for over a decade. So how can local journalists hold their congressional representatives accountable for this inaction? Like, what questions should they all they asking? COLLINS: You know, the question I always ask when I talk to members of Congress—well, I talk to their staffs more often than the members, so that—you know, because I’ve—that’s where the work really gets done, in my opinion, on the policy. But when I talk to them, I ask them, you know, what is your plan to replace these workers, right? Enforcement is part of the law. Enforcement is going to happen. And as a matter of policy, this administration is going to carry it out in the way that they’re doing it. And we can have lots of discussions about whether they’re following legal processes and whether they’re respecting due process rights. But the fact is, enforcement happens. And it happens under every administration. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican or Democrat. Congress continuing to just look at the administration of both parties and saying, oh, go enforce the laws, doesn’t fix the legal system. LABOTT: Or the impact. COLLINS: And it doesn’t—it just doesn’t—it doesn’t look forward and look ahead and say, what do we need this country to have to be successful economically? Birth rates are dropping around here. We know immigrants tend to have more babies. But not only that, a lot of the places that are traditionally high-sending countries to the United States, their birth rates are dropping too. One of the only regions of the world that’s going to have an increase in population in the next twenty-five to fifty years is sub-Saharan Africa. So if we’re competing for workers, and Canada is competing for workers, and the U.K. is competing for workers, and all of the developed economies in the world also need workers, we’re all going to be looking to the same region. And right now, our immigration system is not set up to recruit the best and the brightest from that region. It’s just not. So what is Congress doing to look ahead and change the laws, pass a new Immigration and Nationality Act, so that we are set up for future success? Because the prosperity, vitality, and security of the United States depends on immigration. It’s only one piece of the puzzle, but it’s an important one. And they can continue to look to every administration from now until eternity and say, oh, just enforce the laws. But the laws aren’t going to let more people in. The laws aren’t going to manage immigration better. They’re going to continually work with an outdated set of rules. Only Congress can change those rules in a meaningful way. LABOTT: Yeah. Rose, the Abrego Garcia case obviously has highlighted the kind of due process we’re talking about. But how can journalists explain to their audience why these constitutional protections matter to all residents, not just immigrants? CUISON-VILLAZOR: The way I often explain it to my students and others when we’re talking about immigrant rights is that these are rights that belong to everybody. The Constitution doesn’t say that only U.S. citizens, or only green card holders are entitled to due process. It says all persons. And I think people forget that, right, because of what Laura talked about, how oftentimes immigrants are viewed as criminals. And then once someone is labeled a criminal, it’s as if no rights attached to them at all, which actually is also not true. All persons, whether they’ve committed a crime or not, are entitled to due process—to be able to see a judge, to be able to explain the reason for violating the law. And then also to ask for mercy, right? And so I often encourage everybody to think about these rights as belonging to everybody, because once we start seeing people being picked up and removed to a country that they have no ties to, that will extend eventually to rights that we have as U.S. citizens. And I hope that people who—when they see that, when they see themselves in the place of a person who was picked up, or who’s working in a hospital or in a workplace, and then there’s a raid, and then they’re mistaken for a noncitizen, and then they go through all these different legal procedural problems, then maybe they’ll understand better why it’s important for us to protect these rights that help all persons. LABOTT: I do think that, you know, when we see some of these town halls that’s one issue. Because especially when we see all these undocumented people being sent to, like, El Salvador, not just Abrego Garcia but, you know, people that were undocumented, you know, now they’re talking about sending a lot more, and outsourcing it. And I think that the kind of local community we see at some of the town halls—who’s faced a town hall where residents are kind of—are getting upset about this? I’ve seen—yeah. You want to tell us about that? Q: Sure. It’s kind of hard for me because we’ve had a worker deficit for a long time. I’m in—I’m from North Dakota. My name is Peyton. I cover the statehouse. So I’m kind of in charge of talking with our Congress members and all of that. And for the most part, they’ve been not wanting to host town halls. But the one representative that is, is doing tele-town halls. And people are asking—like, farmers who voted for Trump are worried about losing workers. And it’s hard for us, because we can’t necessarily cover that directly because we don’t want to put a target on their back. We’ve been talking about that in meetings and stuff. LABOTT: It’s a great—it’s a great conundrum to have, that you want to cover the story but you don’t want to put your sources at risk. Q: Yeah. We’re at a standstill. But people are really worried. It’s all sorts of industries, but we’re a huge ag state. We’re a huge oil state. That’s where people work. A lot of immigrant labor is going there, migrant labor. And so, yeah, people are upset. And every time they answer the question—they don’t answer it, of course—but they bring it back to the single issue, we have a fentanyl issue or crisis. It’s just, like, kind of pigeonholed. And so—I don’t know, that’s kind of been my experience. It’s a lot of dancing around the topic. But people are mad. Really mad. Yeah. LABOTT: Yeah. Laura, you know, you mentioned the tradeoffs in having the local law enforcement kind of cooperating with ICE. How can journalists investigate whether immigrant communities in their area have been less likely to cooperate with law enforcement because of this fear? COLLINS: Gosh, that’s an excellent question. I mean, if I were the one asking that question I actually would ask my local law enforcement office—(laughs)—because they’re the ones who do have to keep those communities safe, right? This isn’t something that I spend a lot of time asking, because I rely on all of you guys to do that reporting. (Laughs.) And it’s always so wonderful to read those stories. But, you know, they’re the ones who know those communities best. And also the nonprofits that serve those communities know them well. The faith communities also know them. And so those are going to be places that you would probably be able to get a good story and find those anecdotes that you need to really pull up from, you know, data that you might be able to observe, and figure out what rises out of that. Because we know the data is important to all of these stories. Sometimes there’s a lag in the data. But where you’re really going to get people to pay attention is the stories of the individuals who maybe didn’t—who weren’t comfortable reporting a crime. And, you know, a lot of that—I when I think of that, I think of particularly, like, domestic violence issues, for example. Like, if a woman who is undocumented needs to report and is afraid that she’s going to be arrested too, like, that might show up at your local domestic violence shelter. It might not. But those are places—you know, be creative about where you think people would be going for help if they don’t think their local law enforcement is able to help. LABOTT: Yeah. And, I mean, how journalists report on families facing deportation while protecting their source’s safety and privacy is obviously something, especially in border communities but all over the country, I think we’re going to be facing more and more. And I think that’s, you know, something we could talk about more. Ted, you’ve observed a chilling effect at universities. But beyond foreign students, what other unexpected groups do you think might be affected by current immigration enforcement that journalists should be investigating? ALDEN: That’s a great question. Actually, Elise, I’m going to put that on hold for just half a second. So come back and it may be that Rose and Laura have some thoughts on that as well. I actually just wanted to make a comment coming out of the North Dakota reporter, who was talking about labor shortages in the oil sector and the agriculture sector. She mentioned fentanyl. And I just wanted to say, one of the real challenges in writing about this issue and in covering this issue is to question the categories that are being handed down by officials. So this administration, for instance, has justified—in fact, it’s part of their executive order, their emergency declaration—some of the tariffs under the—on the grounds that we have a fentanyl crisis. They’ve connected it to immigration as well. And I’ve been writing for several decades now about the illusion that we’re going to solve all these things through border controls. So fentanyl gets sort of, you know, sucked in there with trade, and in there with immigration. What we know about fentanyl, for example, there’s almost none of it coming across the border from Canada. What’s coming across the border from Mexico is all coming through the legal ports of entry, a lot of it in commercial shipments or private cars. And so I think we need to be really careful about saying, well, somehow, you know, immigration enforcement is related to fentanyl. We actually have a case study during COVID, when the borders were largely closed, and fentanyl smuggling actually went up dramatically, partly because it was much easier to smuggle than bulkier drugs. The one other category question I would love it if reporters were careful on is this sort of broad notion of who’s undocumented. Because a lot of what the administration has been doing is taking people who are here under temporary legal categories—people who were paroled in by previous administrations, people who are here under temporary protected status. Those people have legal status. A lot of them have claims for asylum and other protection that are working their way through the courts. And the administration at the stroke of a pen, most recently Afghans under temporary protected status, is stripping that away and essentially making these people, quote, “undocumented” or “unauthorized.” So I just want to urge a lot of care in how we talk about these issues and the categories that reporters are using covering them. Because the administration has an incentive to, essentially, create a whole bunch of unauthorized people and then say, oh, we’ve got this huge illegal immigration problem that we’re dealing with. They’re creating a lot of the problem through their actions. LABOTT: Yeah. That’s a great—that’s a great point. Do you want to take the—you know, anybody want to take the, what other group should we be looking at, right, beyond foreign students, like, beyond kind of agricultural workers? Who’s at risk here? CUISON-VILLAZOR: Well, I think what Ted just mentioned about TPS individuals who are authorized, and then all of a sudden—because an executive order or a memo was passed—then all of a sudden they become undocumented. I think it’s important to talk about how they got here, why they claim asylum, the process that allowed them to come here, how they’ve been able to help in the workforce, right? Because when they got here they were given work permits. And then they helped with our economy. And then all of a sudden now they are considered to be undocumented at the expiration of their TPS. LABOTT: So we’re talking Haitians, Venezuelans, Guatemalans— CUISON-VILLAZOR: Cubans. LABOTT: Cubans. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Yeah, Hondurans. LABOTT: Afghans. ALDEN: Nicaraguans. LABOTT: And there are, you know, thousands of Afghans here now. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Yeah. I just actually filed an amicus brief in one of the TPS cases on the Supreme Court last Friday. And that brief highlights some of the ways that the government has been expanding the presidential power to an executive order, using immigration powers to essentially create these undocumented populations, increasing the size of our undocumented population. LABOTT: We have a couple minutes before we go to questions. And we are going to take more of your questions, or your, you know, comments, or your stories. We want to hear from you. I want to talk about language, about how we—because I kind of said something like, illegal—I was on the phone. I said something like “illegal immigrants,” and Laura corrected me, rightly, to say we—you know, we don’t call them illegal. We call them undocumented or unauthorized. Talk a little bit about the importance of language. You know, I learned a valuable lesson. So talk to us about the importance of, you know, treating these people, you know, with respect, and using the right language. COLLINS: So I think language gets sticky, and I think all of you appreciate that, right? And I did mention that I use “undocumented” instead of “illegal.” I will say the term, “illegal immigration.” And when I don’t say “illegal immigrant,” it’s because that community does not appreciate that term, and so I try to be respectful. I will say, each of your communities will have different thoughts on this. But if we’re being more precise about language around who people are and what their status is, there’s a couple of different ways you can slice and dice this. So I think for a lot of people in the public you’re either legal or you’re not. But there’s varying degrees of this, because there’s people who are in a legal status, like parole or pending asylum case, but they didn’t come through a regular immigration pathway. So they are in an irregular status because they maybe don’t have a permanent pathway, or maybe their permanent pathway is several years out. Then there’s people who came via regular pathways. That’s humanitarian migration. LABOTT: DREAMers. COLLINS: DREAMers are obviously undocumented. Some of them, you know, most of them, did not come through a regular pathway. Some of them did come through a regular pathway, a tourist visa, and then overstayed. So there are lots of ways to talk about this. And when you have a question about it, people like Rose, and me, and Ted, we deal with this language all the time, and with the categories of what these people are. And, you know, we’re more than happy to help you think through what makes the most sense. Obviously, your editors are going to have an opinion as well. But I do think it’s worth being very careful about the category of people you’re dealing with and thinking through what is most accurate in the representation of their status, because it’s not so simple as legal or not. LABOTT: Ted, talk to us about, you know, some of the primary sources and documents—and I’m going to ask Rose as well—that journalists can regular check to track immigration enforcement activities in their communities. ALDEN: Yeah. So there are—you know, I’m going to—I want to talk a little more about the sort of high-level national stuff. Each of the reporters will have a better sense in their communities than I can offer. But, you know, some of the—there’s a lot of really good research being done on these issues that I would encourage reporters to tap into. If you don’t already regularly check everything the Migration Policy Institute is producing, you should. A really good source of unbiased information on the whole range of immigration issues, enforcement and otherwise. There’s some extremely good work coming out of Cato, Alex Nowrashteh and David Bier have been doing really detail-rich examinations of enforcement issues, questions of immigrant criminality, which are way, way overstated. There’s excellent work at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Theresa Cardinal Brown doing a lot of great research there. The American Immigration Council, an excellent source of information on the laws surrounding migration. American Immigration Lawyers Association. Local immigration lawyers, as I’m sure all the reporters know, are incredibly valuable, both for what they know at the local level but also their contacts with lawyers nationally. AILA, you know, serves to compile and coordinate a lot of this information on a national level. You know, I could offer some others, but it’s great, I think, with all these stories, because, you know, the point—I don’t remember whether Rose or Laura made this right at the start, these are federal actions, right? And so being able to understand what’s taking place nationwide helps you put your local situation in context. And these are all very, very good sources to help with that broader context. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Yeah. In addition to what was mentioned, I would encourage you to look at Im Prof blog. That’s a great blog that highlights a lot of these research, articles, news stories, human stories. So Im Prof blog—ImmigrationProf Blog. And then the other one is Syracuse TRAC. That’s more—it tracks all the different enforcement activities, border entries, how many people have been detained. So there’s a lot of numbers. If you’re a data person, the Syracuse TRAC system would be really helpful for you. And I’m glad that you mentioned AILA, because AILA does include a lot of other research, I think, that’s done on the local level that doesn’t get amplified enough. LABOTT: OK. I’m going to ask my panelists one more question. And then we’re going to go to the audience. Get ready with your questions, your stories, your issues, best practices that you’re facing. Laura, let’s start with you. It’s the same question. Each of you expertise in your area. What’s the one story you wish more local journals would investigate that could help their communities better understand the real impacts of current immigration policies? COLLINS: That one’s always so difficult because there’s so many things bouncing around in my head. I worry a lot about Afghans right now. I worry a lot about Afghan women. And I worry a lot about not just the Afghans, but the refugees that, you know, are here, who have already been resettled, who maybe have family members who aren’t going to be able to follow them, who they have the legal right to sponsor them and bring them over. We know that Afghanistan is not a safe place, but temporary protected status has been canceled for those Afghans. So those that don’t have another permanent pathway to remain here will have to either leave on their own or be removed to Afghanistan. And we know it’s not a safe place, particularly for the women and the people who worked on behalf of the United States. LABOTT: Yeah. That’s a really good one. And some of these kind of refugee groups, they’re all covering, obviously, the Afghan situation, I can help and other people at CFR can help as well. Ted. ALDEN: Yeah. I actually like that one a lot. There has been surprisingly little coverage about the complete shutdown of the U.S. refugee program. And every community around the country you have refugees who were resettled. You had, under the Biden administration, expanded sponsorships of a whole—in a whole bunch of levels. So you had, you know, communities involved in sponsoring refugees. I suspect there are a lot of stories out of these communities about people who have been left behind by the complete closing of U.S. doors to refugees. I’d love to read more about that. It’s just with so much happening it’s almost become a footnote that, oh gosh, we completely shut down the refugee program, which I think was a source of great pride in the United States for many generations. We have historically been quite a welcoming country to refugees. So this is a dramatic turnaround. And I’d love to see more stories out of those communities. LABOTT: Yeah. And also on the flip side of that, I mean, there are some communities— Binta’s here. Where is she from? Somalia. The Somali community in Minnesota obviously, has, you know, made, you know, a huge community there. There are a lot of other refugee communities in Vermont. There are some folks here in Vermont where, you know, they’re really rejuvenating local rural areas that have become, you know, kind of battered. And I think that’s also a good way to kind of show the positive and economic impact of, you know, how these refugees have been treated, and why—you know, in Vermont I think there’s a great Afghan community. I can let people know if they’re interested. What about—oh, sorry. Rose, what about you? Sorry. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Gosh. I mean, these are all really—there’s so many stories. We have a new pope. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how the way that we talk about Christianity and Catholic faith, and how we believe—that Catholics would believe in what the Bible says they should—you should treat the stranger with kindness, you should welcome them. LABOTT: Evangelicals too. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Evangelicals. So, I mean, many faith-based groups believe in helping others who are not like them. And I’d like to see more of that, and how we can draw upon faith in order to be much more welcoming and to help others. And maybe that might lead to more cross-discussion about—to help those who are—who have been passing restrictive immigration laws on both the federal and state level to rethink the way that—their basic values and principles. LABOTT: Yeah, I think it’s become—you know, it’s become such a polarizing political issue, as opposed to a human issue, when we’re talking about people. OK, so we have two mics, one on each side. Raise your hand. Come with your questions, stories. We have a lot of good questions. Right here. Identify yourself and your news organization. Q: Hi, I’m— LABOTT: And let’s keep the questions short so we can get as many as we can. Q: Hi. I’m Joseph Bustos. I’m a reporter with The State in Columbia, South Carolina. We’re about to have a very tense Republican race for the governor. And our attorney general, who is expected to run, promoted the 287(g) program. What are the advantages, the carrots out there, to actually get local communities to actually sign up? And if it’s training, can they get that type of training somewhere else? COLLINS: That’s a really good question. And I will admit I’m a little bit out of my depth on that. I’ve always viewed it primarily as a money issue, right? There is some funding attached to it. I think that because it’s been such a longstanding program, you could probably go look historically at the other counties that have signed these agreements and figure out how much they got, what the training looked like. I would have guessed that there’s probably someone entrepreneurial enough to offer training like this, but it’s not coming from the federal government and it’s just a unique beast, right. I’m guessing you probably can’t get that same training if you’re not getting it from the U.S. government. And you’re definitely not getting the same sort of powers out of it, right, because they’re going to deputize you to do different things. But I would assume that the primary carrot is funding. LABOTT: OK. ALDEN: Can I make just one other comment on that, Elise? LABOTT: Yeah, sure. ALDEN: Yeah. So this will, I imagine, not be as much of an issue in South Carolina, but there’s a big red-state-blue-state divide here. And the administration does not appear willing to just let states and local police forces and others decide whether to sign up voluntarily. They’re trying to force this nationwide. And so they have threatened, and in some cases implemented, you know, massive funding cuts in disaster relief and other sorts of police equipment for states that are not going along with 287(g). There was a big lawsuit just filed today in Rhode Island, the state of California, and some others involved in this. So there’s going to be these big showdowns between the federal government and the state and local police. Here in Washington State, we actually have a state law that explicitly forbids police forces from cooperating in 287(g), in Secure Communities, in the other federal-state cooperative programs. So there are going to be some high-level legal clashes and funding clashes over these issues that I think will be stories in a lot of the states. COLLINS: These are fun federalism questions. LABOTT: Ma’am? Q: Hi. My name’s Debra Saunders. I’m the Washington columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Millions of people came across the border who were unvetted during the Biden years. And that’s part of the reason why Donald Trump won the election. I’m listening to what you’re all talking about here, and I want to know how much enforcement you think is OK, because I think the American public—not all of the public, of course—but I think one of the reasons he won is people felt that the immigration laws should have been enforced better. And now, you know, there are a lot of people who have come here illegally. What should they expect? LABOTT: What should the people that come here illegally expect— Q: Yes. LABOTT: —or the Americans that— Q: Both. LABOTT: Rose, you want to take that one? CUISON-VILLAZOR: I— LABOTT: Well, no, go ahead. Laura first, OK. COLLINS: I’m sorry. Yeah. Yeah. ALDEN: And I’ve actually got a comment too, so we all want to weigh in on that. LABOTT: Let’s keep them brief, OK? COLLINS: Yeah. We have always said that you have to have a robust legal-immigration system alongside robust enforcement, right? And I think what you saw at the border in the last several years was migration that was poorly managed. And I do think that there were attempts to streamline that into a more legal pathway with CBP One. I see the skepticism in your face. And I think that there was—but you’re right that they didn’t change the law, right? They didn’t ask Congress to change the laws. This administration is not asking Congress to change the laws either. We haven’t had a very serious attempt at doing comprehensive immigration reform, as dirty as a term as that’s considered now, in a long time. And so we are having immigration policy set with the judiciary and the executive branch. It’s not lasting. It’s not forward-looking. We hear a lot of chatter right now about, oh, we didn’t need new laws, we just needed a new president. That means if the election switches the next time and you get someone who’s more open to migration—and, you know, these phenomenons are not just about the way the U.S. views migrants, right; like, there’s lots of different moving parts to this. That means that we’re going to be in the same situation with the same old tools, right? So this really does come down to what Congress is willing to do. And there’s lots of good policy solutions out there. They involve, you know, working with our allies on regional solutions to make sure that we are finding alternative places for people to go before they get to the United States, working with them. And the Biden administration was doing some of this at the very end. It wasn’t very—with the Los Angeles Declaration, right, and the Safe Mobility offices. They had a nice name, but really they were telling people not to come to the United States and go other places. And there were other governments working with them to do that. So it’s a weird balance, right. In terms of what people who are here without status should expect—under this administration they should expect that they’re going to get removed, that they will find them eventually. They probably don’t have the funding or the manpower to get every single person. They come here—as you’re well aware, the vast majority of them come here because the amount of money they can make here is so much greater than what they can make at home, that they can support several generations of family back home. I would love for there to be more legal opportunities for them to come work here, because we clearly need the labor in a lot of parts of this country. That doesn’t exist right now. And until that changes, you are going to continue to see the labor market in the United States be that pole factor. So we haven’t figured out as a country what that right balance is between robust enforcement and robust legal immigration, because Congress keeps going, well, I don’t want to fix it. I don’t know how to fix it. We’ve got to do this one thing first. We now have a border that is fairly quiet. It remains to be seen if Congress now takes that—for years they’ve said that’s what they need in order to do it. That’s what I’m waiting to see. I know, obviously, they’re very busy working on this reconciliation package, so there’s a lot going on. We’re running right up against midterms, though, guys, and we know the House doesn’t like to do a lot that they don’t have to do before midterms. So it’s going to be a tough road ahead on that. I do think, though, that we haven’t figured out what that right balance is between enforcement and legal migration. LABOTT: Ted, do you want to briefly add? ALDEN: Yeah, just really quickly. So I would just challenge the notion of unvetted. So in the 1990s, when lots of people were coming across, mostly Mexicans sneaking past the Border Patrol, those people were unvetted. What we saw during the Biden administration—and there are legitimate issues about the very large numbers—but you had people coming in under parole programs. They were being vetted, then flown, at their own expense, make it clear, or sponsor’s expense, being flown to the United States. Those people were being vetted. The ones showing up at the border were largely turning themselves in to the Border Patrol, requesting asylum. Again, there’s a very detailed vetting process for asylum. So the notion that there were millions of unvetted people flooding into the United States is just not factually accurate. You could say that there were more people coming than we were willing to take as a country—very legitimate debate. But they were not unvetted. Just one final point. I think there was a bait and switch by President Trump. He said, look, we’re going to go after criminal migrants. In fact, what they’ve done is they’ve eliminated all the enforcement priorities. They’re not saying, yes, we’re going to try to find people who’ve got criminal records, not just people who crossed the border illegally, find those and get rid of them because they’re dangerous. They’re going after everybody who’s here illegally. The DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, has made that very clear. So, you know, I think when we’re writing about, we’re talking about this stuff, we want to be clear what this administration is doing. They use the fear that Americans have, and in some cases very legitimately because of horrible crimes that have been committed, to launch a broad sweep, not one targeted at criminal migrants. LABOTT: And, you know, in order not to make this a political issue, you don’t have to write President Trump—I mean, I’m not going to tell you how to do your job, but I would be, like, President Trump—you don’t have to be, like, President Trump is creating fear. All you need to do is go to your communities and talk to the people, and they’re—you know, people are afraid to leave, you know, to go to school, to go to church, to go, you know, to leave the country, because they won’t be able to get back even if they have a legitimate visa. I mean, the fear is palpable. So it doesn’t have to be a political issue. You just have to, you know, kind of look right in front of you, and I’m sure that there are lots of stories in your communities. Who else has a question? Right here. And then we’ll go to you. Q: Hi. I’m Charlotte Matherly from the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire. And as far as getting information out of ICE, for example, there’s a tiny town in New Hampshire where ICE raided a local Mexican restaurant and said that they located four people. We don’t know their names. We don’t know if they were arrested or what happened to them. All we know is that people in town don’t seem to have seen them since. And so I’m just wondering if you have any advice on how to track those down when we don’t even have a name or maybe what happened to them. CUISON-VILLAZOR: I wish I could figure that out, because that has happened also in New Jersey and here in New York and Long Island. It took a while for people to—for journalists to be able to find them and for lawyers to find them. I don’t know. I mean, there’s—transparency is important, right? Accountability is important. And I think what we need to do is to push the government to say you have to disclose where people are. It’s—the public has a right to know. Their families have a right to know. And so I would lean in on your First Amendment rights and the need for the government to be transparent with the public about what they’re doing. LABOTT: And if there’s no NTA, notice to appear, then— CUISON-VILLAZOR: Well, those are for individuals who are supposed to be—to go before a court, immigration judge. She’s talking about— LABOTT: About people that are unauthorized. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Who are unauthorized, undocumented, irregular. The term that I think we were talking about was the term illegals. And that just makes me go nuts, just speaking for myself. And so I had to say something about that, right. And it’s because language is important. LABOTT: Yeah. Yeah. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Anyway, that’s—sorry, I don’t have a specific advice I can give you other than to say to focus on transparency. LABOTT: Except to keep—and keep writing about it. Keep writing about it. Who else? Yeah, let’s go to this gentleman right here. Q: Hello. Thanks for all this. John Hult, South Dakota Searchlight. So I’m interested in—I don’t know if this is a 287 question or what. Maybe this factors into it. So just before I came, I got some information that I haven’t been able to really look into yet, and it was about ICE agents showing up at our local courthouse, to guardianship hearings, to pick up people who were trying to get guardianship of children who crossed the border, you know, by themselves, without parents or whatever. And I’m wondering if that is a factor, right, because it’s easy enough for me to call the sheriffs and say, well, how many people are you holding for ICE? That’s something that we’ve been doing. But what do we need to be thinking about? Are these agreements that are in place? I mean, I guess I’m wondering at what point does someone cross the line or does the courthouse cross the line or does the sheriff cross? I mean, do they have to have a formal agreement in place? Should I be concerned that ICE is showing up at the courthouse? Does that mean that there’s an agreement in place? COLLINS: I don’t think they have to have an agreement in place to do their jobs, right? And I think, actually, what I’ve heard—my understanding about enforcement actions around unaccompanied children is that there is this—I think it was part of the executive orders on day one about better tracking the sponsors of unaccompanied minors. And that would be an HHS responsibility, Health and Human Services. I don’t know that that hasn’t been delegated out, right? I don’t know who in the federal government is doing this. But I have heard other stories similar to this. So I think this is probably related to those. There were—and I—this goes back a lot further than this administration. When you saw sort of waves of unaccompanied children coming in, there were big concerns about labor trafficking or big concerns about who their sponsors are. Some of it does cross into just making sure that they’re not going to other undocumented families, because then that’s part of that dragnet of being able to find more people. But some of it really is about child welfare. And so there is a little bit of a line there of whether they’re—you know, how aggressively they’re doing their job. Do they need to show up at the courthouse for that? Do they need to go into schools to do that? And so there are questions about how it’s being done. But I’m pretty sure that’s related to this has been a long-running conversation. It’s just that this administration, I think, has—I’m pretty sure they have an executive order about it. LABOTT: Right here. Binta. Q; Hi. Binta Kanteh from Minneapolis. I’m a contributing writer to the Sahan Journal and the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. For people that are from communities that have been impacted by these wide-sweeping visa revocations, in addition to the countries that you listed, South Sudan is another one that comes to mind, which we’ve had no update on since the beginning of April for people from those communities that they haven’t been detained and there’s no technical risk that they know of in being detained or having or receiving one of these notices about their visas being revoked, who are willing to talk about the impact that this is having on their communities and their families and friends. What should we as reporters be keeping in mind on their behalf, recognizing that so much is changing, especially if they are from a community that’s been called out by the government for these wide-sweeping changes? LABOTT: Ted, do you want to take that one? ALDEN: Yeah. I mean, this is—boy, is this a hard one. So I was a reporter for a lot of years. I worked at local papers as well as national and international papers. And normally, like most reporters, I liked to get things on the record. You want to be able to identify people. Obviously, you know, it’d be nice to have a photograph of the person. But we know that this is an administration that is going after people individually, going after people who speak out, going after people who are identified as leaders in their communities. And the tricky thing about all these immigration issues is that the legal foundations that a lot of these people are standing on are very shaky. I mean, I remember for, you know, my book after 9/11, I had a DHS official who’s grown pretty angry at the whole post-9/11 process, saying immigration law is like tax law. You’re guilty until proven innocent. And so, you know, I would genuinely be concerned about identifying people who are speaking out in ways critical of what ICE is doing in their communities. That’s not to mean you shouldn’t write the stories, but I would suggest—and take it or leave it, and talk it over with your editors—but I would suggest being extra careful about identifying those people in ways that they can be targeted by this administration, because, again, a lot of this is very new for us and, I would argue, deeply un-American. But people are being targeted for their words, their speech, in ways that we have not really seen before. And I think you do need to be careful of your sources in that respect. LABOTT: Yeah. OK, we have about ten minutes left, and we have a few questions. I’m going to take these one, two, three, four, five. OK, I’m going to take two lightning rounds. One, two, and three, just ask a quick question, and then we’ll go to the panel. Q: Morgan Rothborne, Ashland News. This is kind of top level. I think it is probably just something we’re all thinking about curiosity-wise. We’re talking about Fourth Amendment rights being threatened. But this also feels like, you know, mentioning relief aid or equipment for police being withheld to—at the state level. Is there a chance this could go to the Supreme Court with not just Fourth Amendment but Tenth Amendment challenge to this kind of enforcement? LABOTT: Yeah, OK. Is there one behind you? Q: Richard Ruelas from the Arizona Republic. Very quickly to 287(g), it seemed, at least in Arizona, it’s more of a jail thing and former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who might provide a good case study of the cost of 287(g) if it results in civil-rights violations. We’re seeing a lot of criminal cases in Phoenix for both felony reentry and misdemeanor entry. The second one is surprising some judges. Asking your thoughts on that, and also the—how hard it is to get inside the civil immigration court, why we don’t see dockets, why we can’t see individual cases in there. LABOTT: OK. And then this gentleman right here. Q: Hey, there. Daniel Zawodny from the Baltimore Banner. I’ve been covering the Abrego Garcia case pretty closely. And one of the things that’s been interesting to see Judge Xinis, in her orders, in trying to compel information from the government. You know, you have Marco Rubio saying it, and other folks, basically saying they cannot give information over national-security concerns. And I’m just wondering kind of what you all make of that, if that is kind of a sign or an indication of something, or if, you know, we might start to see this— LABOTT: Other cases. Q: —this excuse of national security start coming out as a way to deflect and not give information. LABOTT: OK. Why don’t you start? CUISON-VILLAZOR: Yeah, I can address the first and third question, because to me they’re—they raise similar questions about the power of the federal government and what are the checks and balances by the judiciary, right. So you asked a question about whether some of these cases—Fourth Amendment, Tenth Amendment—if they’re going up to the U.S. Supreme Court. There are those cases now percolating, and some of them have already gone up through what’s called the shadow docket, which just means that national injunctions should be stayed until the courts can deal with the merits, the specific claims of the non-citizens, or, in the case of the federalism question, the states, whether they can be sued or they can be forced to engage in 287(g). And so I think those are—the U.S. Supreme Court will help to address some of these questions eventually. But until then, because it takes years for some of these cases to go through, then we’re going to continue to see some of these enforcement actions happening and lawsuits happening. LABOTT: Do you have anything on the civil-immigrant question? COLLINS: I’ll do—no, I’m not getting into the Court, because I haven’t tried to do that. But on the second question about the felonies and the misdemeanors, I feel like that’s kind of a repeat of what we saw in the first Trump administration, where they make some policy changes to try to charge people more with crimes, to try to speed up their ability to remove people, and to heighten the punishment for that entry so that it is harder for them to then try to return. And so I think that’s a policy decision they made, similar to what they did in the first one, but maybe this one won’t back up DOJ so much because there’s fewer people coming at this point in time. LABOTT: Anybody on Abrego Garcia? No? OK. ALDEN: The one—sorry—one thing I’d add quickly. And I actually don’t know about the civil immigration courts at all. That’s a great question. I don’t know about access to those. But the reason the government is talking about national security—there are sort of two grounds on which the courts have been historically really deferential to the executive branch. One is all aspects of immigration and border enforcement. Sweeping decisions, some of them post 9/11, some of them predating, that give the president a lot of power in those areas. And the other is national security. Courts are, obviously, very deferential on national security. And you could see this in some of the cases that are already being played out. The courts—or, the executive branch trying to say there are national security interests here that are forcing us to do what we are doing. So that’s why they’re talking that up. I would be very skeptical of those claims. LABOTT: Yeah. Other than the tattoos, which are—you know, could be a lot of things—it doesn’t really seem that they’ve introduced specific national security concerns for Abrego Garcia. OK. So we have— ALDEN: Yeah, not even in the closed sessions. Yeah. LABOTT: Yeah. We have one, two, who’s got hands? Q: I have an answer. LABOTT: All right, quick. Q: OK. If you’re—(off mic)—court. So you can’t find the charges; you can only get those through the lawyer. But if you go to the DOJ’s website, there’s something called the Executive Office for Immigration Review. So Executive Office for Immigration Review. So you’re going to look at that. You’re going to click the EOIR case information. And if you can get the person’s alien number from their loved one or from their lawyer, you can type that in and that’s how you can find some updates on their, like, immigration court decisions. Q: (Off mic.) Q: Perfect. (Laughter.) LABOTT: Yeah, you should all be—we’re going to have a reception later, and we should all be comparing notes. OK, we have one, two, three, and I think we’ll be done. Q: Very brief. Dionne Anglin with KDFW, Dallas-Fort Worth. I just wanted to ask, the series—the spots that we have been seeing, maybe they’re considered public service announcements, where the director of Homeland Security strongly urges those who are here unlawfully to self deport, so to speak, and you may be able to return, are we seeing anybody actually doing that? CUISON-VILLAZOR: Are we going to do a lightning round? LABOTT: Yeah, let’s do a lightning round. Q: Hi. Pat McCarthy, with Central Current from Syracuse, New York. And I just wanted to add something quick on the, you know, vulnerable communities. I think that we should consider indigenous groups as well. One of the leaders of the Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy recently told me that Border Patrol has been stopping their people so frequently when they cross over the—you know, the border of the reservation, that the nation actually created and distributed IDs for even their children to show that they’re, you know, native. LABOTT: Anybody with—anybody with indigenous communities maybe talk to— Q: Yeah, Pat McCarthy. LABOTT: Pat McCarthy at the end. OK, and one more here, Erika. It’s Erika, right? Q: Yes, Erika with the Chicago Tribune. I wanted to answer a question you had asked that no one in the panel had been able to ask, about groups that maybe would be vulnerable with these immigration issues. Would be STEM groups, with the student visa revocations. So we talked to a lot of universities that said, you know, these people from India, you know, China, that they fill a lot of their STEM programs and their research programs at universities. And so if these student visas are not allowed, that those research programs and advancements in STEM are just going to deeply decline. So that’s just something for journalists to look out for. LABOTT: That’s a great story—that’s a great story. Anybody with university—I’m sure you all have university towns. Great story. Like we’re—you know, we want to produce semiconductors. We want to produce all this technology, AI. That will be a real drain, if we’re losing those foreign students. Q: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, huge brain drain. Not just financial drain. And then the other thing too is, you know, we mentioned Afghans with the refugee status. We have a lot of Ukrainians that settled in Chicago after the war—after Russia invaded the Ukraine. And they’ve been receiving— LABOTT: Well, I kind of don’t think—I kind of think they’ll be OK. (Laughs.) Q: What did you say? LABOTT: I kind of think they’ll be OK. Q: No, they’re receiving letters also that they are— LABOTT: Really? Ukrainians? Q: Yes. Yes. So we are—that’s something that we’ve been reporting. And so just keep an eye on that in your communities. LABOTT: That’s interesting. And, I mean, there are a lot of Ukrainians I know in Chicago, but— COLLINS: Their program hasn’t been wholesale canceled yet, but you’re right. Some of them have received letters saying their individual parole is canceled. Q: Exactly. And then, just really quickly, a little bit of a bright note. We reported a story on an immigrant who needed a kidney. He was Venezuelan. He was here on TPS. His brother joined him, was not able to get past the border. He was vetted. They declined it. But then he snuck in and turned himself in. So he was on ankle monitoring. But he came specifically up here to donate a kidney to his brother. And then he got picked up. We wrote—we broke that story. We wrote it. A lot of media pressure. I think even the Washington Post wrote about it. And ICE did let him go. So he’s here now for a year so that he can donate his kidney to his brother. So media pressure does work. LABOTT: Isn’t that great? That’s great. That kind of pressure does—did you—you’re good? OK. So we have from Dallas— COLLINS: Do you want to take it? CUISON-VILLAZOR: I— COLLINS: I heard of one or two cases of people going home, but not systematically. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Based on the self-deportation, those, like cruel posters? LABOTT: Or the selfie in front of the jail. COLLINS: But the—yeah. And I think that—but my concern, and not being an immigration lawyer this is not anyone’s legal advice, my concern always is the potential implications of going back under a program like that, and what it would do to your ability to return later. CUISON-VILLAZOR: Yeah, so, I mean, there’s a three-ten bar, right? If you’ve been here undocumented, without lawful status, for 180 days or below, then you leave, three years you’re barred from coming, right? So if you self-deport, if you’ve been here 180 days or below, you can’t come back for three years. If it’s more than that, then it’s ten years. So these posters that have—you said, you know, you should self-deport, it’s better for you, we’ll even give you money for that, it doesn’t go into these legal issues of what happens whether—when you can actually come back, if you can come back. LABOTT: OK. Well, that was an amazing discussion. And clearly from the audience, you all have a lot of experience and a lot of best practices to share with one another. As we’ve been all saying all day, in addition to what you get here from us today—and we’ll continue to provide resources here at CFR—you all are such a great resource to one another. So you’re part of a community where you can help one another. Everyone’s offered great suggestions, great best practices. And I encourage you and invite you to get to know one another in between the last breaks and reception. And take it with you. Thank you very much to Rose, Laura, and Ted. (Applause.) And thank you. (END)  

Panelists discuss the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including increased deportations, the attempt to end birthright citizenship, and the suspension of refugee admissions, as well as the implications for U.S. national security and foreign policy. This meeting is part of CFR’s Transition 2025 series, which examines the major foreign policy issues confronting the Trump administration. The Silberstein Family Annual Lecture on Refugee and Migration Policy was established in 2019 through a generous gift from Alan M. Silberstein and the Silberstein family. The lecture provides CFR with an annual forum to explore emerging challenges in refugee and migration policy in the United States and around the world. For those attending virtually, log-in information and instructions on how to participate during the question and answer portion will be provided the evening before the event to those who register. Please note the audio, video, and transcript of this hybrid meeting will be posted on the CFR website.