So, not surprising, we saved the last panel for the most important issue that was in the
minds of people for a very long time.
I think we, before the Supreme Court decision, we all thought this entire conference would
be on the implementation of DAPA and expanded DACA and DAPA.
Indeed if you, some of you were here last year, we had an entire panel on how we thought
the Supreme Court was going to rule and what the implication of that is going to be.
There was a major Supreme Court decision, which a lot of people think will land up becoming
one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions, which kept intact the injunction
against the implementation of DAPA and extended DACA.
And in our precious use of punery, we're going to call it supreme lack of clarity.
So essentially this is a panel to discuss both the legal and the political fallout from
the Supreme Court decision in U.S. versus Texas.
And to inform this debate, it's an extraordinary group of people we have collected for you
for the last panel.
David Chihulyan on my furthest right is currently the Deputy General Counsel of the DHS, whose
job is to put all the small fires out at DHS on immigration issues to opining on major
policy issues.
Before he had the job, he was both the Chief Counsel and Counsel at the Subcommittee on
Immigration on the U.S. House of Representatives.
So he brings both the administration and lawmakers' perspective to this debate.
Steve Lugomsky for us immigration lawyers is considered as close to a sage in the field
as you can find.
He is a chair emeritus professor at the Washington University School of Law at St. Louis.
He is the co-author of a major textbook on immigration and for two years was Chief Counsel
at the U.S. CIS.
Christina is considered by all measures one of the most dynamic and effective young leaders
in immigration rights movement today.
She is both the co-founder and director of the United We Dream, one of the organizations
that was at least considered key for President Obama's announcement of the DACA program.
And last but not least is Becky Talant, whose job now is head of government relations at
DrawBox, which may seem odd to you, she's not here to tell you that your DrawBoxes
are full, but it's a life prior to the DrawBox that is of intrigue to this group.
She was a very important member of the staff on immigration issues on the Senate and the
House side.
She was assistant to Speaker Boehner on policy before the Speaker left his job, before that
she was Chief of Staff to Senator McCain and highly involved in cities of iterations on
immigration legislation, while Senator McCain was co-author with Senator Kennedy.
But most recently Washington Post called her, I'm sure you've been called a lot of things,
ever called.
Not all of them, good for...
Leading immigration expert within the GOP.
So thank you to all of you for being here, but we'll start with David, just because we
give deference to administration on this panel.
So David...
You're the only one.
So frankly, we thought this would be the time when most of us in this gathering would be
implementing DAPA and Expanded DACA and instead they're attending this conference.
So how did we get here from the announcement of your Secretary in November of 2014 to the
President?
So if I can, I just want to set the stage a little bit.
I want to talk a little bit about my time on the Hill and what I kind of found when
I got to DHS.
So it's a platitude to say that our immigration laws are broken.
I think we all understand it to some degree.
I did not understand how fundamentally broken they were, to the extent to which they were
broken until I arrived at DHS and I just want to set the stage.
I think this helps people understand what we did and why we did it.
So I get to DHS and we all know about the 11 million people and I think most of us
know that also although there are 11 million people in the United States who are unlawfully
present and are subject to removal, DHS is resource to remove a small fraction of those
individuals.
What I think people know to a lesser degree is the fact that those are not the only people
that are subject to removal.
On top of the 11 or 11 and a half million, we also have new people arriving or trying
to arrive every day that are subject to removal and it's our responsibility to remove them
as well in addition to those individuals.
We also have individuals who are unlawfully unlawfully here who commit crimes and also
make themselves subject to removal because of those crimes.
So not only do we, is there a, do we have a resource to remove a fraction of those individuals
but it's even a smaller fraction when you consider that there are additional individuals
that are added to that every year.
In addition to that, both morally and politically and congressionally, we are essentially directed
particularly through appropriations but also authorizing provisions in the law to focus
our removal efforts on securing the border, so new entrants at the border and to focus
particularly on persons convicted of crimes by the severity of the crime is the way that
the law speaks about.
So I get there, you know, of course, and I mean this has been true before I got there
so it's not like I created any of this but that is all true but we're also facing tremendous
headwinds at that time, headwinds that we hadn't faced before with respect to the populations
that Congress and that to be honest and I believe morally and politically we're also
directed to really focus our removal efforts on.
At the border, we have an unprecedented shift in demographics, people arriving at the border,
our laws are written to kind of face what we have historically seen which are Mexican
nationals coming across the border and our laws are written to deal with large populations
of Mexican nationals attempting to cross the border.
We have expedited removal and a few other provisions, it's also pretty inexpensive to
remove a Mexican national that we encounter either at the border or at a port of entry.
It is significantly, exponentially more difficult and more expensive to remove someone who is
not Mexican who arrives at the southern border and what we've seen over the last few years
is a precipitous drop, a real drop in the number partly because of our enforcement efforts
but partly also because of the Mexican economy, a drop in Mexican nationals attempting to
cross the border and what we've seen is a significant increase in the number of non-Mexican
nationals crossing the border and that has meant a significant change in the way that
we resource border enforcement and also the length of time it takes us to remove nationals
or people that we encounter at the southern border.
With regards to people convicted of crimes, we have seen over the last five years jurisdictions
basically stop cooperating with us across most of the major jurisdictions in which immigrants
live because of our immigration enforcement efforts and we've seen, we've also been to
some degree hemmed in our actions by the federal courts, both with regards to people we encounter
at the border and people with criminal convictions and our ability to remove even them has been
significantly altered and hampered.
So that's an additional reality that we were faced with at that time.
So taking all of that into account, this administration, the president and the secretary
decided they were going to tackle all of those problems holistically, you know, what to do
about the 11 million, what to do about border enforcement considering the changing demographics
at the border, what to do about aliens convicted of crimes.
So in an effort to further secure the border, because that's a real priority for this secretary
among other things.
I mean, I know we're not going to get credit for it in many circles, but I can tell you
that the secretary every single morning looks at the border apprehension numbers, he reads
the intelligence of what we're seeing in Central America and in Mexico and from other places
and he just cares about that issue as much as anything else that he does.
Anyway, we focused on all of those issues and we came out with a package on November
2014 of executive actions to address issues across the board.
One of them was a full reprioritization of our enforcement efforts.
We moved resources from the interior to the border.
We focused additional, the remaining interior resources on people convicted of crimes.
Again, we were no longer easily getting individuals from local jurisdictions as they were being
released.
Instead, we had to go out and, you know, through pretty large enforcement efforts, you know,
find individuals that we were before we were just having transferred directly to us.
We also took on a massive effort to win back jurisdictions with regards to cooperation
and we also, on top of everything else, tried to focus on dealing realistically with the
population that was going to remain behind.
Just to, again, put this in perspective, you know, when we started the whole thing, there
was already a fraction, I mean, our resources can only remove a fraction of the undocumented
population here, but when you're focusing on new border enforcement, a new entrance,
and when you're taking into account the difficulties of removing those individuals and if you're
focusing on people convicted of crimes, including people that are legally here, there were even
fewer resources once you take all of that into account that was left for the undocumented.
So part of the package included taking that population or those populations within the
11 million that were even, that were the lowest of the lowest priority and those are the people
that had been here for a long time and had either who came through no fault of their
own or who had U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident children in the United States or
the people that were going to be, again, they were the lowest priority and we were going
to, we wanted to set them aside, we wanted to have them, you know, apply, go through
background checks, they would, we would learn who they were and we would, they would get
work authorization, we would also take them out of the underground economy, we thought
that was good for America and then we would set those people aside and we wouldn't have
to focus resources on them and we would do all of that with using their resources rather
than our own and that's what we went to do.
And as most of you know, we were quickly sued by 26 states who brought the lawsuit in a,
you know, very smart venue, they filed in Brownsville and the Southern District of Texas.
At the time there were only two active judges, one of whom was a senior judge and wasn't
taking cases so they essentially guaranteed that a particular judge who we'd been in front
of many times would take the case and as you all know he issued a preliminary injunction,
I will add just a few more facts before I stop talking, that, you know, in doing the
course of the litigation there were a number of Fifth Circuit judges that looked at the
case and Supreme Court justices that looked at the case and I just want to, just point
out this fact, right?
So there were two times where the preliminary injunction came up for review in front of
the Fifth Circuit, in both those cases there were the same two judges on both of those
panels that ruled in favor of keeping the preliminary injunction so therefore against
our policies but there were two different judges that sat in dissent in both of those
cases that would have upheld those policies.
So essentially there was a 2-2 tie in the Fifth Circuit as far as we're concerned and
then the case went up to the Supreme Court on cert and faced an Eight Justice Court at
that time and for all intents and purposes we understand there were four justices that
likely would have struck the policy down and four justices that would have upheld the policy
so another tie in front of the Supreme Court but so it is Judge Hainan in Brownsville that
has so far been able to stop the policy from taking effect.
So let me stick with you for a second.
So what are your plans for the rest of the of the demonstration to deal with Judge Hainan?
So I want to escape that question pretty quickly by saying that so you know after the Supreme
Court ruled and issued you know no decision was the summary opinion that essentially keeps
the Fifth Circuit opinion in place we filed a motion for re-hearing before the Supreme
Court and that remains pending with the Supreme Court hasn't acted yet hasn't dismissed it
or necessarily taken it either so we continue to wait and the Judge Hainan has stayed proceedings
in the District Court until the Supreme Court rules and his last order also depending on
how the Supreme Court rules allows gives the parties another 30 days to meet and confer
as to decide how to move forward but so there have been no decisions yet on how to move
forward.
So keeping that executive action but is there any other plan for the remainder of the administration
to do any more executive actions affecting the unauthorized?
I mean nothing that hasn't I let me just say that there are things that are on the table
that we announced so you know there are things that we are looking at that may affect some
small portion of those individuals so you know we announced a long time ago we put out for
example for public comment some guidance on what constitutes extreme hardship for purposes
of getting three and ten year bar waivers which are satisfactorily authorized so we're
still working on that guidance and we're working on a few other things but there's as far as
I know nothing that we're working on that hasn't already been announced.
So Steve let me turn to you the Supreme Court kept intact the injunction a nationwide injunction
but in August of this year a lawsuit was bought in Federal District Court in New York challenging
the nationwide injunction.
Two-part question does from your perspective that lawsuit have any chances of success and
as a sage in this field do you think it should ever succeed?
Well you put a lot of pressure on me.
First of all let me say I thought David's description of both the forest and the trees
was excellent because I'm no longer in government I can afford to be much more irresponsible
even than I usually am so I can speak directly to that.
The lawsuit you're referring to is the Vidal case as V as in Victor IDAL filed in the Federal
District Court in New York there are a lot of narrow technical issues presented by the
case but the big question in the case is whether a federal court in one jurisdiction may set
aside a nationwide injunction issued by a court in another jurisdiction and if it has
that power should it do so in this case.
I have a fairly strongly held view about whether it was proper to make the injunction
nationwide and continuing along the line of irresponsibility I'll just preface my
comment by saying that I feel very strongly that the executive actions in question in
essence are well within the administration's legal authority and therefore no injunction
should have been issued at all but I take your question as focusing on whether if it was
otherwise okay to issue an injunction there was a further valid basis for making it nationwide.
I believe there was not.
The governing legal principle here is that an injunction is an extraordinary judicial
remedy and that means among other things as the courts have routinely said that when a
court issues an injunction it is supposed to issue it in the narrowest possible terms
it should be no broader than is necessary to protect the interest of the plaintiff.
The question in this case is whether Texas has an interest in making sure that the executive
actions don't operate in other states should it have been limited to Texas or should it
have been nationwide or something in between.
It's hard for me to see how Texas is hurt by people receiving executive action in the
state of New York but in fairness to Texas they have made one significant constitutional
argument.
The argument is that there's a whole long line of cases before the Supreme Court.
They span more than 100 years in which the court has consistently said that on matters
of immigration it is imperative that the nation speak with a single voice.
That part of Texas' argument is correct and you can easily see why the court would say
this.
It doesn't want 50 different sets of immigration laws and policies operating simultaneously.
The key however, at least in my view, is this.
In every single case in which the Supreme Court has talked about the importance of uniform
nationwide policies its point has been that this is why these policies have to be set
by the national government rather than by individual states.
It seems to me it stands this principle on its head to say now that one state alone,
in this case Texas, gets to dictate what those nationwide uniform policies are supposed
to be.
Let alone that one federal district judge in Brownsville, Texas, and I mean no disrespect
to Brownsville, gets to make that decision.
That's one thing.
Now maybe Texas could say, well you know it's true, we can't come up with a convincing
argument as to why the harms that we claim we're going to incur wouldn't be prevented
by limiting the injunction to Texas.
But there are 25 other states as David has said that have joined us and we need a nationwide
injunction to protect them.
Well, first of all none of those other states have yet to demonstrate even that they have
been injured by DAPA and therefore that they even have legal standing to sue in the first
place.
But second, even if they did and even if the argument otherwise made sense on the merits,
it seems to me that the very most that that argument could logically justify would be
extending the injunction to those 26 states and not to the 24 other states and certainly
not to the majority of those 24 other states that not only don't feel harmed by DAPA but
feel affirmatively benefited by it and for that reason filed an amicus brief actually
chow actually encouraging the court to deny the request for the injunction.
So it seems to me there is one other little point that Texas has made.
Maybe it's not such a little point.
Texas says, well you know if the injunction were limited to Texas then undocumented immigrants
could simply move from Texas, relocated another state, take up permanent residence there and
obtain DAPA.
Well if Texas is going to be honest and consistent in its argument, its whole argument for standing
has been these undocumented immigrants are hurting our state and it kills us even more
to have to spend money issuing driver's licenses to them.
So you would think Texas would be thrilled if the effect of limiting the injunction to
Texas is that people leave.
Now maybe you could work down the road to other scenarios, maybe Texas thinks that what
some people will cleverly do is relocate in another state, take up residence there,
get DAPA where the injunction doesn't apply and then move back to Texas for the privilege
of getting a Texas driver's license.
That doesn't seem like a scenario that will occur with enough frequency to offset the
harms that these other states are suffering by reason of the injunction but perhaps that's
what Texas is thinking as well.
David and Phyllis, since you're the government lawyer here, do you agree with Steve on national
injunction?
Sure, I mean it's been our position all along in the briefing that the district court should
not have issued a nationwide injunction.
But that's quick.
And the government doesn't.
So let this be.
Are you done?
Yes, I'm done.
I'm just going to have the time.
I'll speak to 2017 after the election.
Thank you to you.
It's either going to be a Trump presidency or a Clinton presidency, I guess we assume.
I take it there's nothing to prevent President Trump from rescinding the executive action
while the case is pending.
So I'll answer that question quickly.
Second, if there is a President Clinton presidency and she has expressed her support of the action,
what choices does she have to help to get this implemented in light of the litigation?
That's a great question.
I think in part the answer depends on what happens in any intervening litigation.
First we do have the pending government petition for re-hearing before the Supreme Court that
David has described.
Second there is the Vidal case which will tell us whether it's possible to lift the
injunction outside Texas.
And third, going in the other direction, we don't have any way to know whether Texas
or perhaps other states are planning to bring an action to enjoin DACA, the original DACA
program which was not challenged in US v. Texas.
If they do then presumably it too would be brought in Judge Haynes' court which doesn't
automatically mean Texas wins but pretty close.
Assuming none of those things happen, let's say the government's petition for re-hearing
is denied, let's say the Vidal case is dismissed for whatever reason.
Then the administration would have to decide whether there are administrative options that
ought to pursue.
It seems to me that as to those there are both legal constraints and strategic constraints.
The big legal constraint again is the nationwide injunction, does it apply, is there a way
of distinguishing the particular program and maybe the best legal strategies for the government
to pursue if it elects to go that route would be first of all to use the formal notice and
comment rulemaking procedure which Judge Haynes' fault of the government for not using in the
case of DACA.
I continue to believe it's not legally required but whether I'm right or wrong there are certainly
judges who think that it is and it might be wise to use it just in case.
And secondly, one of the objections that Judge Haynes and even the Fifth Circuit had in the
case of DACA was that they read the program at least in its implementation as being less
discretionary than it purported to be.
So maybe a future program would give greater prominence to the discretion.
Maybe instead of saying the threshold criteria are five years of prior residence brought
here before age 16, et cetera.
Maybe it would say here are the factors that the agency will take into account anytime
anybody individually requests deferred action and those factors include how long have you
been here, how old were you when you came, are you elderly now, do you have a disability,
do you have family ties in the U.S. and if it did that it's possible it could bring
in even the parents of DACA recipients who up to now have not been covered by any of
these programs.
Okay.
So I'll let you two lawyers take a rest and moving to the politics.
Christina, let me start with you.
This was obviously you folks fought very hard for this and you had a big success in DACA
and then this was also expected to be a great success, it didn't happen.
So tell us first what has been the reaction of the communities to the decision and what
is your plan to deal with the outcome of this litigation for the rest of this administration?
Thanks for MPI for putting this together and for having us here.
You know, it was heartbreaking, you know, I have my own parents who are eligible for
the program and in United we dream most of our members have family members that were
eligible for the program and so having family members, my mom, my dad included feeling let
down by the court decision was a really difficult moral moment and for the spirit of our communities.
One because the news that once again their lives and their experiences and their vulnerability
to deportation is not important and feeling played by the politics even though the community
understands that the Supreme Court is involved now for them and for people like my parents
it's all about the politics and not feeling like their lives really matter in the context
of the political debate on immigration.
So I think unfortunately the non-decision from the court had that sort of reaffirmation
of that feeling and at the same time I will say what you saw immediately particularly
in communities that are a lot more organized is a desire to say we need something.
If the court is going to say no to us, if Congress is going to say no to us, we need
to figure something out and we want something.
So immediately you saw community members coming out either in press conferences or community
gatherings and even direct actions across the country saying if we don't have protection
from deportation, deportations need to stop, our families need to continue to be together
and we need immigration reform and that's what you heard.
Now when we hear the term immigration reform for different people in our community it means
different things but basically what's been really clear from our community is that there's
urgency about the situation changing.
You have people like my own parents who have been here for over 16 years undocumented and
they have gone through the cycle of President Fox at the time and Bush were meeting right
before 9-11 happened and they were talking about an immigration reform deal and there
was hope there and then we know what happened and then there was the 2007 debate around
immigration reform and how that failed and that community failed again.
Then you have 2010, then you have 2013 again and so I feel like there is both an urgency
but also skepticism about even the promises that candidates like Hillary Clinton have
made about immigration reform.
So organizations like United We Dream feel greatly encouraged to hear that if she was
to become president she will prioritize immigration reform but there is a lot of skepticism to
overcoming the community.
Will she really deliver?
We experienced something similar under an Obama administration of commitment about immigration
reform.
The issue ended up not being a priority.
We did not see a bill after the House and Republicans stole the process in 2013 and
then we have seen almost 3 million deportations and in the midst of all of that DACA has
been a gleam of hope but I think that what we are up against right now is urgency and
really desperation from the community to see something.
Whether that's administratively or whether that's legislatively in 2017, I think for
the community it's about a solution that is going to change their lives.
It's about people like my parents feeling like after 16 years of working here on document
and raising a family that can finally leave without fear and that it's the urgency
that our communities have.
For us, the mandate from the community and our membership is really clear.
Our organizing and our advocacy needs to focus on figuring out how, whether administratively
or whether legislatively, we are going to be able to get a win for our communities.
Even though there is encouragement about the conversations around immigration reform from
one candidate and there is also the factor of Trump and how that has had a huge impact
on the community.
There is a risk that you have pointed out in this conversation that if Trump was to
become president, we will even lose the protection that we have of about 800,000 young people
that have DACA.
And so it's a moment where the community feels and knows that there's a lot at stake.
But therefore, I think the community is feeling like we cannot believe all the words that
we're hearing but rather prepare us and organize us to push folks for actions.
And if Hillary Clinton was to become president, I think it is expected for her to be a real
leader and to deliver beyond the words and the commitments that she's made, but also
to be different than what we have seen in the Obama administration from day one, particularly
when it has come to the deportations and the violations that we constantly see from ICE
and Border Patrol agents in our communities.
Because with the recent administration and an increase in rates, I feel like really the
fear in our community has increased.
So there is an expectation for what a potential Clinton administration will be like and what
in our community expecting that administration to be different from day one.
So what would Secretary Clinton have to do to get a more galvanized Latino vote as President
Obama got after the implementation of DACA?
We know that immigration for particularly the Latino and the immigrant vote, it's a
key issue.
I mean, poll after poll, we have seen that.
In the last presidential cycle, we saw how DACA was actually really helpful for Obama
to get reelected and how that invigorated the Latino vote to come out to vote and for
the president to get re-election and get huge support from the Latino and immigrant voter
base.
So if we live in a similar way, voters do not only want to hear words and there is a
huge encouragement from the commitments and the conversations that we have heard from
Hillary Clinton, but there is a question and skepticism about the action.
So what can a potential Clinton administration do to galvanize and to mobilize the community
and to move the community beyond the skepticism?
Number one, she could be completely different than Obama.
And there's a whole host of things that she could do in terms of using her administrative
authority or administrative powers to, for example, close detention centers and family
detention review enforcement priorities, et cetera, which would send an immediate signal
to our community that this administration is going to be different, that they're not
going to be targeted by ICE and Border Patrol agents as they have been under the Obama administration
and that she's serious about the commitment of caring for our families and caring for
immigrant communities.
So I think that that will be a very critical signal to send to the community from day one
so that you could even have a galvanized community that is going to engage in a potential immigration
reform debate because you don't want just the commitment of Hillary Clinton and the
potential work with both Republicans and Democrats on this to be part of the political
play.
You need a community to be engaged and to be galvanized around this.
And for her to be able to win that and lead that strategy, there needs to be an immediate
signal on day one that she'll be different to galvanize the community.
And to be completely non-partisan, if President Trump is the president in 2017, then he has
already indicated, as you said, that he would rescind DACA.
What is your strategy going to be?
Well, as good strategists and community organizers, we're preparing for either one scenario.
And United We Dream has launched two critical things that we work with many of the partners
actually that I see here within the immigrant rights movement and the immigrant rights advocacy
community.
And number one is empowering our communities to know how to protect themselves and just
about their rights.
And so having deportation defense networks all across the country, we're testing a model
like this in Houston, Texas, which hosts the county in the United States that supports the
most number of people in the country.
And it is about having communities that are able to protect themselves from deportation.
Number two, we have launched a hotline that is available to the community so that the
community can report deportations and ICE and Border Patrol activity that would allow
us to keep accountability within the agency.
So all of us to say that if Trump was to become president, we are really seeing if we have
been concerned and outraged about the out of control enforcement that we have seen in
the last few years, it's going to be much more worse.
He's committed to triple the capacity of ICE agents and the agency overall.
He has committed to build the wall.
He has committed to deport massively our families.
And so for us, enabling the community to be protected will be key.
But number two, we know that there's also a very lively debate about sanctuary cities
or communities across the country.
And for us, that's going to be a localized movement that needs to be led by our communities
in every city and every state across the country so that even within our cities and communities
and states, we could protect our communities from an out of control and even more scary
administration under Trump.
So Becky, no pressure.
You're the leading immigration expert within the GOP, as Washington Post would say.
So keeping the injunction in place.
A lot of people could argue that Republicans want this debate.
They feel vindicated against what they thought was overreach by the president.
Having gone that victory, don't you think the Republicans now feel the pressure to do
something on this issue?
And what do you think that is likely to be in 2017?
To be honest, the Republican crowds that were celebrating the DACA-DAPA injunction are probably
not the communities within the Republican Party that are feeling any kind of pressure
to work on this issue.
I think those are probably two separate groups of people.
So to take a step back, when I was working for Speaker Boehner and the executive actions
came down, I'm sure you all followed this too, but this turned into, this frankly caused
this issue to suddenly pop up in Congress again and kind of came the issue de jure.
We almost shut down the Department of Homeland Security over it on a funding bill and resulted
frankly in resurgence of some really nasty immigration amendments to some particularly
appropriations vehicles that we had managed to tamp down and avoid for a little while.
And to be clear, the executive overreach issue is not isolated to immigration.
I think that what our Republican members would say was that this was just the latest in the
string of administration overreaches on a number of issues.
You saw this anywhere from something small like the designation of a wilderness in New
Mexico right on the Mexican border that had been opposed by Congress for an extended period
of time.
And you saw this with the waving of a number of mandates under Obamacare.
We saw this with some energy and climate change issues, a lot on energy issues.
And so this had been a frustration with our members for a long time and frankly was probably
the, what they would say, the inability of this administration to enforce the law as
written by Congress was the number one issue cited for why our Republican members didn't
feel like we could move forward with immigration reform as a whole when we broached the subject
at our Republican retreat in the beginning of 2014.
The fact is that they cited all of these issues that I just listed previously and others
to say, you know, we could write the most perfect immigration bill that we could be
happy with that would put all the resources in place to secure the border and legalize
and, you know, do a temporary worker program, but as soon as the administration gets its
hands on it, they're just going to ignore it and do whatever they want to do anyway.
And you know, if you look at, if we take a really frank look at what would have been
in place if we had implemented an immigration law, let's say that we did do a two-year delay
on legalization while security measures were put in place, which is one of the things that
people were talking about doing.
Do you really think that the administration would have continued deporting people that
were otherwise going to be legalized in two years during that two-year window while we
were supposedly putting our enforcement measures in place?
Of course not.
And there would have been probably a lot of court challenges if they'd tried to do it.
So there is something to be said for what these, that makes these concerns legitimate.
Now that, you know, I, so I put that into one bucket and I think that it's important to
understand the context here.
This is not just about overreach on immigration, but this is about Republican members of Congress
feeling like there was a pattern of abuse of power and that, and that we, we were hearing
about this on a lot of issues prior to even the executive action taking place.
But then that was kind of like the, the bomb on this issue.
So then the question is, you know, do Republicans feel the pressure to move on this issue?
I think it obviously depends on which Republicans you're talking to.
Republicans who are pro reform in my experience are people who look at this issue in a very
practical way, not frankly in an emotional way.
It's an economic issue.
Our laws, you know, don't make sense as David was saying.
How do we practically find our way out of this hole that we've dug ourselves into?
It's, it's, I think that it's interesting to see, you know, how Republicans, having conversations
between Republicans and Democrats around reform, Democrats tend to talk more about the personal
side of it, the personal narrative, the personal story.
Republicans really do focus on more the practical.
That's why, and you look at the members who are, who are advocates on this issue, a prime
case speaker, Ryan, he's a very practical guy.
He's a strong economist.
And I think, and while he's also a devout Catholic and is a, what we would call a compassionate
conservative, I think that his main, it seems to me that his main motivation and interest
in this is a, is a, is, comes from one of practical movement.
So, on the logistic sides of this, I think this, I think there's no question that this
bill is going to have to go through the House of Representatives first.
The Senate advocates, the Senate folks who worked on this in the past have made it very
clear that they're not going to get hung out to drive by the House of Representatives
again, having done this twice with them.
So I, you know, it's going to have to come through the House first.
I think that practically it's going to be a Republican House.
If you look at the election, it's going to narrow, but it is, the Republicans are likely
going to hold.
So then you're looking at what Speaker Ryan is willing to do.
And I really do think it does come down to him, whether he wants it to or not.
And my question, and I'm sure I'm going to get a Hillary question here in a minute, but
I'll be honest that my concern on this is that if this is a, if this is a, if this is
a first issue that President Clinton moves to, if she becomes president, I worry and
I'm concerned that she will feel the need to overreach to the left to appease some of
the, you know, Bernie voters and that flank and that unfortunately immigration would end
up being maybe a bit of a sacrificial lamb in that, in that case, because it really is
going to have to be in order to get it through the House of Representatives really is going
to have to truly be bipartisan and moderate in nature.
And if this is, if it's an extreme reach to the left, it's going to shut down our folks
that are even willing to approach and talk on this issue.
So I, unfortunately, I love Casey and I love Speaker Ryan and I hate to put them in this
position, but I really do think this is going to fall at his feet in 2017.
So let's assume it falls at his feet.
What is the likelihood that he will come up with a proposal which is going to have bipartisan
support?
I think if anybody can do it, he can, but I think it's going to be, it's going to be
a challenge.
It's going to be a real challenge.
I think, I think it also has to, I think that Speaker Ryan is enjoying being Speaker
Ryan more than Speaker Ryan thought he would, and I, and I think that the big question is,
does he want to be Speaker Ryan for two more terms or is this, is this, is he all in in
the next year to two years on his speakership?
We saw this a little bit with Speaker Boehner, right?
So when they brought me on to, to work on this issue, everybody knew and was assuming
that Speaker Boehner was getting ready to be, you know, staring down the end of his tenure,
and this was his effort to kind of, this was one of his legacy issues that he really wanted
to get done.
Now, some things like an Eric Cantor loss and some, you know, the pressure at the border
from Central America kind of derailed those efforts for us, but I think, I think Speaker
Ryan is sincere about wanting to do this.
I also worry that as this election moves forward, we potentially lose some of our moderates,
that the, that the conference becomes more polarized, and so the question is, what does
that vote count look like?
Currently, you know, the Republicans can't get anything off the House floor if they don't
lose more than 28 of their fellow Republicans, I think that, that, that fraction will be
significantly smaller, and like I said, it'll be more of a concentration, you know, we're
not losing a lot of freedom caucus folks in this election, we've lost one, but we're
not probably going to lose a lot more, they're in pretty safe seats.
We're going to potentially lose somebody, I really hope none of this is true, but somebody
like a John Keckho, or hopefully not a Will Hurd, or hopefully not a Martha McSally, who
have the potential to be really real champions on this, there's, there's other seats that
are the, that are the most questionable.
You see it in the Senate too, if you look at risk, you've got Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte,
John McCain, who are people whose votes we need on this to get it done, so it's, you
know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a troubling outlook as far as bipartisan work,
if this Congress becomes even more polarized than it is now.
Can I take it, if possibly President Clinton sends, decides to do executive action on this
again, that precludes any possibility Republicans moving on either House or Senate?
I do believe that.
I think that the, the thing that could be most harmful for the effort of actually getting
reform, long-term reform done is, is further executive action, and, you know, the one thing
I've always thought, you know, the, the Clintons are very good at working with Congress, not
to generalize them as a unit, but they have always historically, the, the first President
Clinton was, had built strong relationships with Congress, and I would assume that if
Hillary's elected that she would do the same, and I think that's going to be really important
for this administration is to do some, you know, I know that there are obviously historical
tensions between Secretary Clinton and the House Republicans, but doing some significant
relationship building like former President Clinton did, I think, would be helpful.
And you know, I would really hope that she would try to work those relationships and
try to put a really moderate middle-of-the-road proposal first through regular channels, through
regular process, like, you know, President Bush did in 2007, really work hand-in-hand
with Congress to get a proposal forward.
If that doesn't get done, then, you know, obviously I find executive action more likely,
but if we're talking, you know, a lot of the things that have been brought up today, a
lot of the, the, the issues that Christina mentioned, continued executive action is a
long-term solution for this, right?
If we don't, if we don't have a President Trump this, this time around, you know, who
knows who will be President for 8, 12 years?
And so I think we're probably all in agreement up here that there needs to be some kind of
real permanent solution.
And the best way to do that is to work with Congress to get it done.
Though I understand, I mean, nobody, probably few people know this better than I have as
all the iterations that I've been through on immigration reform in Congress.
It's obviously a frustrating and challenging proposal, but, you know, look at the folks
who've been working on healthcare reform since the 90s, you know, this big piece of legislation
take a long time to do.
And unfortunately, that seems to be kind of where we are in this, in this pattern at the
moment.
And again, just to be completely non-partisan, let's assume President Trump is the President.
How do you think the Republicans in Congress are going to behave on this issue?
I think it's going to be interesting because I actually am of the camp that I, I mean,
I've been very public with, I've been fairly public with my Trump criticism.
So I, you know, to be fair, I actually don't think that Trump's going to follow through
on any of these things that he has put forward.
I think, I think, and I think it's going to be to the incredible frustration of a lot
of these members of Congress who have been throwing their weight behind him for the last
few months, particularly center sessions and, and the like.
You know, I think he actually at the end of the day has probably much more moderate views
on immigration than he's putting out there on the campaign trail, but he just can't help
the love and affection that the hardliners are giving him.
He loves that cheer the time he starts talking about the wall at his events.
And I think, you know, a lot of this is going to come down to cost, right?
You know, we're either going to have a very, very tightly divided Senate or we're going
to have a Democrat-controlled Senate, most likely.
Are we going to be able to be pushing appropriations through, even if they come out of the house
with increased numbers on enforcement and increased border patrol agent numbers?
Are the Democrats going to pass those likely not?
And I just think that frankly, you know, I think a lot of this is playing to the crowds.
And I mean, there's also questions to whether or not he really understands the, you know,
what would need to go into doing a lot of these things, you know, the practical legal
side of it.
So you know, I think it's a lot of hullabaloo.
I don't think that, I just don't think that at the end of the day a lot is going to come
from it, though I know that that doesn't give a lot, you know, the folks that are impacted
by this, their everyday lives impacted by this, I know that doesn't give them a lot of comfort.
But I mean, that's just my personal opinion to be frank.
Okay, folks, those will take questions on this side and that side and while you're lining
up, let me get David to respond to Becky's possibility of something working in the house
in your capacity as having worked on the house.
Okay.
I will answer that.
But that means that I am going to step out of my role.
Giving you a vacation?
Yeah, I'm going to speak completely, like not from the Department of Homeland Security,
but based on my personal experiences when I used to work in the house.
So let me say that I can't think of anything I disagreed with right now.
There may be one or two things that Becky said, but I agree almost everything she said.
You know, I spent seven and a half years on the house.
Most of that time was in working with one gang or another in the room with well-meaning
members of the Republican side who really wanted to get something done.
And so I believe that the will to do something is really out there.
I mean, it's hard as a Democrat until you really spend time with them to understand
the pressures they're under.
They want to do the right thing.
They are pragmatic, but they have a base that they have to deal with as well.
And until it's really time to do something, at least their calculation, it doesn't make
sense to be extraordinarily public about it.
And I get that.
What's also been extraordinarily clear to me is that Republicans largely need two things,
particularly in the house.
I mean, I have little time and no time in the Senate.
But they need to have a better feeling that our border is secure and that our laws are
being followed.
I think they need that.
They need to feel like, you know, we're going to have rule of law someday and that we're
going to have real border enforcement efforts.
And they need to feel reasonably assured that this isn't going to happen all over again
the way it did last time.
That 10 years from now, there aren't going to be 11 million people.
That's really what they want.
And I understood that when I was there.
And I understand why they wanted and I understand, to be honest, I think it's a fair ask from
their side.
So the question is, can we figure out a way to come to the center and figure out how
to deliver those two things and have a system that works for the country and that takes
care of those that are undocumented here, because I think they're willing to do that
as well.
That's not easily done, I know that.
But I do mean, you know, people that know me from my prior time know that I was always
the pessimist, right?
I was the one that was always saying, all right, this is not going to happen, even a
lot of other people did think it was going to happen, partly because I was in the room
and I knew what it would take.
But I'm optimistic now, and like I've been in the past, so I think as long as both sides
can come together and can give, it can be done.
Okay, folks, while Becky and David both stay optimistic, let's get it over to them.
You guys will shoot us down now.
I actually don't know if I really projected optimism, but I appreciate it.
But you said it was possible, that's good.
Oh, okay.
I'll take that.
Okay, any questions from the mics?
We answered every question.
Amazing.
So in...
It's the end of a long day, and maybe people are right.
Yeah, it was a long day, but Christina and Steve, do you want to give any closing comments
to the audience about how you see this unfold for the rest of the year, and next?
No, I can't think of anything insightful to add, and that hasn't usually stopped me in
the past, but...
I know, I should have just taken the optimistic note on David and Becky and close.
Christina, do I...?
Yeah, I think that just from the advocacy and organizing perspective to the last two
points that Becky and David raised about the feasibility and what we look at, the possibilities
in 2017, I would say that looking back, the theory that working on a Senate bill and that
that will create momentum and that that will lead to the House taking action, it was totally
flawed.
And our organization is independent.
We hold both parties accountable, so I'm not taking either side.
It's more from the analysis and the work that we have done with our own strategists who
are our members, and so what it's clear here, the question for us is what's going to be
different in 2017 that will really make this possibility a reality.
And a couple of factors, I think it's Ryan and also the community, and the role that
the community will play in showing up for Election Day in November, and I know many
of you here are doing work for that, including ourselves, but also what is going to be the
impact of the election both on Democrats and Republicans on this issue.
And I think that for the community, what's clear is that we can go on with the same strategies
that have been used in the past, but rather really take a look at the power that we have
and do our power analysis and our homework to be able to hold those folks accountable
and push them to solutions.
Because ultimately, as Becky said, we need solutions that are permanent, and also at
the same time, our community needs a win and needs some relief ASAP.
Great.
Thank you.
And let me take this opportunity to thank David, Steve, Christina, and Becky for taking
the time and for concluding this conference on this extremely important topic.
This is the last panel of the day.
Thank you to all of you for spending your entire day with us.
Hope you found it useful.
Before you all go, let me thank the people who never get tanked enough for people who
make this thing possible behind the scenes.
There are a number of people from clinic.
Dr. Hassan Ritter, Emily Hawke, and Ashley Feasley, in particular, who put a lot of effort
in getting all of you to your seats.
To Andy Schoenholz, our host from Georgetown, thanks.
And to Lisa Dixon, who really is the force behind all this, along with our communications
director, Michelle Middlestatt, who make all this thing look so easy.
Thank you very much.
And we will all see you at the 14th LAPC conference.
Thank you.
