Ep 10: Immigration Crisis: How We Got Here - Part 4

 In this final episode of my four-part immigration series, I examine the scope and impact of Trump's second-term immigration policies, including mass deportations, the targeting of legal immigrants and international students, and the administration's use of El Salvador's CECOT prison to detain migrants. I explore the attempted elimination of birthright citizenship through executive order, the economic consequences of widespread enforcement raids, and the dismissal of immigration court cases for people sent overseas. Through personal stories and policy analysis, the episode shows how these actions represent a significant departure from previous immigration enforcement practices and concludes our exploration of America's immigration system from its historical roots to today's breaking point. 

Transcript

Raheel Khan: 0:58

It's amazing to think those words weren't uttered by some fringe politician talking to some small crowd of supporters, but the current president of the United States speaking to tens of thousands describing his opinion of fellow human beings. Based on that kind of rhetoric, it's not surprising that under Donald J. Trump, US immigration policy has gone from broken. To outright dangerous mass deportations, military enforcement, birthright, citizenship under attack, and real families, American families being torn apart. Welcome back to Khannecting the Dots. This is the fourth and final episode of my in-Depth look at Immigration in America. In the first three episodes of the series, we explored how we got here. The long history of America's racist immigration policies, the political failures that led to our current broken system and the fear-mongering that's turned a policy challenge into a weapon of division. Today we're looking at how Trump 2.0 has turned that weapon up to full blast. The question is, are we at a breaking point? Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has gone full speed ahead on his anti-immigrant crusade. In the five months since Trump took offICE; we've witnessed ICE raids that ignored previous protections for schools and hospitals. The deployment of Marines and National Guard against American protestors. An executive order, attempting to eliminate birthright citizenship. The detention and attempted deportation of legal, permanent residents for their political speech. American citizen children being expelled from the country. This isn't about immigration policy anymore, or even who gets to be an American. This is about who has power in America and how they choose to wield it over other human beings. Let's start with what's actually happening on the ground. Since January 20th, the scope and intensity of immigration enforcement has exploded. On day one, Trump declared a national emergency and ordered the military to help expand detention space and transport migrants. The administration sent 1500 more troops to the southern border, a 60% increase in active duty forces. Troop deployment is only the tip of the ICEberg, though. What's so different about how the Trump administration is handling things is that they have explicitly abandoned the longstanding practICE of prioritizing criminals for deportation. To them all undocumented immigrants are criminals. CNN recently reported on internal ICE statistics that showed less than 10% of immigrants in ICE custody had criminal offenses. More recently, the Cato Institute reported that 65% detained by ICE had no criminal convictions, and that 93% had no violent convictions. This represents a fundamental shift in immigration enforcement from targeting public safety threats to casting the widest possible net. The administration has also eliminated Biden era protections for sensitive locations, giving ICE permission to raid schools, hospitals, and places of worship. I. The costs of all of this are astronomical. When Trump uses military planes for deportations, it costs taxpayers nearly$5,000 per person. That's far more than the cost of a first class ticket to the same destination. The regular deportation flights aren't much cheaper. ICE pays private companies about$8,500 an hour to fly these planes. And flights considered high risk, that prICE jumps to nearly$27,000 an hour. But here's the truly staggering number. Economists estimate that if Trump actually tried to deport a million people every year, it would cost American taxpayers$88 billion annually. That's nearly a trillion dollars over 10 years. This doesn't include the tax revenue lost by removing these immigrants from the workforce. I. The economic cost is terrible, but the human cost is immeasurable. Behind every statistic of mass deportation is a human story. Let me tell you a few of them now. First in February there was a case of a 10-year-old US citizen who was receiving treatment for a rare form of brain cancer. She was expelled to Mexico, along with her undocumented parents and four siblings, three of whom were also American citizens. The family were on their way to an emergency medical appointment in Houston when immigration agents stopped them at a checkpoint. The parents were given a cruel choICE. Leave their children in the US without them or be deported together. They of course, chose to stay together as a family. Now, five of the six children live in Mexico while their 18-year-old sibling remained in the US. Since the deportation, her seizure medications have to be mailed from the US at an unsustainable cost, and she's lost access to the specialists who understand her condition. Worse yet, she's developed new symptoms, including headaches that her doctors have identified as a source of concern. The family has applied for humanitarian parole to return, but meanwhile, a child with brain cancer is cut off from the medical care that could save her life. That isn't the only tragic story. There are at least two more separate cases involving American citizen children being forcibly removed from the country, sent with their mothers on deportation flights to Honduras without access to attorneys, I. In the first case, a 4-year-old boy with stage four cancer and his 7-year-old sister were detained by ICE, taken to El Paso, Texas and flown to Honduras first thing the next morning. The 4-year-old who was actively receiving treatment for cancer was flown to Honduras without his medications. In a second case, a 2-year-old US citizen was similarly expelled from the country with her mother. Attorneys were prepping legal challenges when the children were rushed outta the country on ICE charter flights before any petitions could be filed. Both families had fathers residing in the US who were unable to make decisions about their children before they were flown to Honduras. The mothers were given minimal to no opportunity to speak to their husbands or lawyers before being sent to ICE detention centers and deported. When Secretary of State, Marco Rubio was asked about these cases, he said the headlines were misleading and claimed that the mothers chose to take their children. Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem went even further claiming that the American children with Cancer chose with their families to be deported. To countries where they would likely have limited or no access to lifesaving treatment. But attorneys report, the mothers were given no choice and were told their children had to come with them. As one attorney put it."It's a lie. It's untrue" that the mothers wanted this to happen. The most infamous example of deportations were those to El Salvador. On March 15th, after invoking the Aliens Enemies Act. The Trump administration sent three plane loads of immigrants to El Salvador's, notorious CECOT Mega Prison. 238 men accused of being Tren de Aragua or MS 13 gang members. But. Here's the real story. A 60 minutes investigation found that 75% of those immigrants had no criminal records. A subsequent ProPublica report showed that the government knew many, if not most of these men had committed no crimes other than being undocumented. Many of them had actually followed legal pathways to enter the country. The evidence used to justify these deportations, tattoos, and social media posts. That's it. The stories of so many of these men remain unknown and are only now starting to be told. For those interested in learning more about them, I highly recommend reading the HuffPost article Trump sent them to hell. Now he's erasing them all together" by Matt Shuham Jessica Schulberg.. It's an excellent accounting of what's happened. Let me just talk about a few of the people deported. Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist seeking asylum deported after an ICE officer determined that his tattoos reading Mom and dad were likely gang tattoos because they had crowns over each word. Andre comes from a Venezuelan town, famous for its Three Kings Day Festival, which uses a crown as a principal symbol. He had fled Venezuela seeking safety from persecution due to his sexuality. Recently, his immigration case was dismissed in US courts. Effectively destroying his chances of returning. Jerce Reyes Barrios. A professional soccer player was deported based on a tattoo of a crown over a soccer ball. Barrios chose that tattoo because it looked like his favorite team's logo, Real Madrid. His tattoo artist, confirmed this to CNN. The family only discovered his deportation when they saw him in viral videos posted by the Trump administration. Recently, his asylum case was upheld in court, giving the family a glimmer of hope that their loved one could someday be brought back to the U.S. Then there's the most well-known case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. His saga shows just how far this administration will go to deport immigrants and circumvent the courts. Abrego Garcia had been living in Maryland with his US citizen wife and three children for 13 years. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him a reprieve from deportation due to the danger he faced from gang violence if he returned to El Salvador. On March 15th, ICE put him on a plane to El Salvador anyways. The Justice Department later called it an administrative error, but then defended the move claiming he was a member of MS 13. They continuously tried to prove his guilt with previous police encounters, court papers, and a temporary restraining order that had been filed by his wife. They even doxed his wife, by accident they say, forcing her to be moved to a safe house. This all led to the infamous picture of the tattoos on Garcia's hands with the letters. MS. 13 Photoshopped on his fingers above the actual tattoos. The one that Trump insisted were real in his interview with Terry Moran. Yet despite the government's claims, an immigration judge ruled that they had offered no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS 13 or any terrorist activity. I. The case went to the Supreme Court, which unanimously ruled that the government must facilitate Abrego Garcia's return, but Trump refused to bring him back until June 6th and not to correct the error. Instead, he was indicted on human smuggling charges. Recently, the government has stated that Mr. Garcia will never go free on American soil even after a judge recommended his release. His attorney said it perfectly. Due process means a chance to defend yourself before you're punished, not after. This is not justice. It's an abuse of power." The Trump administration has also targeted students and activists for their political speech. You've likely heard these names before. Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Badar Khan Suri They, along with many others are students, researchers, and scholars, some legally in this country, and visas others permanent residents. None of these students broke any laws. They weren't violent or confrontational and are not known to have a espoused any hateful or anti-Semitic rhetoric. Their only crime was participating in protests that the Trump administration disagreed with. They were targeted for their political speech supporting Palestinian rights. Of all the student activists targeted, Mahmoud Khalil is likely the most well-known. The first activist arrested, he became the poster child for Trump's attacks on pro-Palestinian students. He is Syrian born of Palestinian descent and a graduate student at Columbia University where he acted as a negotiator between campus protestors and university administration. Khalil was in his apartment building lobby, returning home from dinner when ICE agents took him into custody. Even though he holds a green card he was held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center more than 1000 miles from his home. His wife was pregnant at the time of his arrest, and the government denied his request to be there for the birth of his first child. After more than three months in detention, Khalil was finally released on June 20th. The government has never provided any concrete evidence of his wrongdoing. Marco Rubio said that the State Department has revoked 300 or more student visas adding."Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas". But the targeting goes far beyond Palestinian activism. The Trump administration has intensified its crackdown to include any international students who have ever had an encounter with law enforcement, no matter how insignificant. NPR reported that after weeks of confusion, the Trump administration was compelled to confirm in court that had terminated immigration records for thousands of international students because of past encounters with law enforcement; for issues as minor as speeding tickets, traffic violations, and dismissed cases that never resulted in convictions. By various accounts, almost 1800 students and graduates have had their visas or statuses revoked, affecting people at more than 280 institutions across the US. Chinese students are being particularly targeted. Rubio announced that the US would aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. This could potentially affect close to 280,000 Chinese students in the U.S. currently. All potential international students must now show their social media posts as part of their Visa application process. Officers must review applicant's entire online presence to identify those who bear hostile attitudes towards our citizens culture, government, institutions, or founding principles. The problem is that the criteria for one counts as hostility are so vague that it could include virtually any criticism of American foreign policy or the current administration. The message to international students nationwide is clear. Any political speech, any criticism of US policy, any association with causes, the administration disapproves of, can cost you, your education, your future, and your right to remain in this country. As a result, universities across the country are issuing guidance to international students, essentially telling them to stay silent on political issues to protect their immigration status. This is having a chilling effect on academic freedom and turning campuses into places where fear, not inquiry dominates. But students aren't the only legal immigrants being targeted. The crackdown is systematically dismantling legal immigration pathways across the board. Skilled worker visas are being denied at higher rates. Family reunification is stalled and even routine renewals are facing unprecedented delays and rejections. Most appalling, even naturalized citizens are being investigated for potential de naturalization, basically stripping the citizenship of people who've been Americans for years or decades. This is extremely rare historically. The Trump administration is dramatically expanding these efforts. During his first term, the rate of referral for de naturalization increased by almost 600%. Under his second term, it's predicted to skyrocket with the administration indicating a plan to review 700,000 naturalized citizen files. Even US born citizens aren't immune. The percentage of citizens detained by immigration authorities has been increasing as agents prioritize speed over accuracy. There have been multiple stories on social media of US citizens being detained, typically when attempting to reenter the country. Suspiciously, many have been of those critical of the administration. All of this just means that under Trump 2.0, the net is being cast far and wide with no real concern about who gets swept up in the wake. Trump's biggest constitutional overreach has been his attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship through his day one executive order. This is a direct attack on the 14th Amendment, which states all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. As I talked in the second episode of the series, the Supreme Court upheld this right in the 1898 United States versus Won Kim Ark case. Affirming that a Chinese individual born in the US to immigrants was still a US citizen, even though his parents could never be. In an effort to block this action. 22 Democratic LED states filed lawsuits and multiple federal courts have blocked Trump's executive order. But on June 27th, the Supreme Court handed Trump a major victory. In a six three decision. The justices essentially said that federal judges can't block Trump's policies nationwide anymore. They can only protect the people and states that actually sue him. And what does that mean? Trump's birthright citizenship ban could now potentially go into effect in over half the country, the 28 states that haven't filed lawsuits against it. The courts didn't say whether Trump's order is actually legal or not. They're saving that fight for later. If allowed to stand Trump's order of would deny citizenship to more than 150,000 babies per year. These children would be denied basic healthcare and nutrition assistance, and when older won't be able to work lawfully or vote. As one civil rights attorney put it."This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S." The speed and scale of Trump's crackdown has triggered massive protests across the country. Protests against immigration raids started in LA and spread across the nation. Trump's response was to deploy military force against the American citizens. In L.A.. He deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines, over the objections of the governor and mayor. A three court panel recently allowed Trump to maintain control of the Guard as a legal case continues to be reviewed. Trump has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, labeling the protest as an act of rebellion. If he does, it will allow him to fully deploy the US military against the US citizens. Despite this threat, the protests continued and culminated in the No Kings Day protests on Saturday, June 14th that drew at least 5 million people nationwide. Protests against immigration raids continue, but they are smaller in scale and more localized now to avoid clashes with the guard or military. There's yet another troubling dimension to Trump's approach. Expanding who is considered illegally in the country. More than 1 million people were granted legal entry under Biden administration programs. I. They're now being considered illegally here by the Trump administration. Trump has retroactively deemed that these legal programs were actually illegal. These people are from countries such as Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba. All places that have been suffering from unrest, economic collapse, and violence. Even more galling is that his administration plans on deporting Afghan refugees, many that helped the US military, back to Afghanistan. They're claiming that the conditions there have improved enough that the refugees don't need to be in the United States anymore. The Taliban still control Afghanistan, and many of these people are at risk of detention, torture, and death if returned. Not only is administration revoking protective status for so many, but they're actively attempting to deport people to countries They're not even from. El Salvador is a prime example, but others include war torn nations like Libya and South Sudan. The Supreme Court in their infinite wisdom recently ruled that Trump can continue with these deportations while the case works its way through the courts. Not surprisingly, there appears to be an ulterior motive to why some of these countries were chosen. In a May, 2025 court declaration, Marco Rubio said that blocking these deportations threatens a significant commercial deal to expand activities of a US energy company in Libya. Essentially, the US wants Libya's oil and that apparently takes precedence over human rights. The administration has also ordered the expansion of Guantanamo Bay, the military prison in Cuba to hold tens of thousands of immigrants. Using Guantanamo for civilian immigration Detention crosses a line that even previous hard line administrations avoided. And here's something that seems straight out of a Comedy Skit. Florida is apparently constructing what's being called Alligator Alcatraz, a detention facility in the Everglades that will cost$450 million a year to run. Florida's attorney General has said the state won't need to invest much in security because the area is surrounded by dangerous wildlife, including alligators and pythons. How is this being paid for? FEMA funds the same money being denied to residents in blue states affected by disasters. This is our reality now. Where we're sending people into war zones for the sake of commercial deals and building detention camps surrounded by alligators. Ever the showman, Trump and his team have turned immigration enforcement. Into a massive propaganda tool. On official White House social media pages. There have been posts showing immigrants and shackles being prepared for deportation flights. One was captioned. ASMR, illegal aiding deportation flight, featuring footage of handcuffs and change jingling. Another used Semisonic 1998 hit song Closing Time while showing handcuffed migrants being loaded onto planes. Semisonic quickly condemned the unauthorized use of their song, saying:"We did not authorize or condone the White House's use of our song in any way. And no, they didn't ask. The song is about joy and possibilities and hope, and they have missed the point entirely." The administration has also manipulated media coverage, updating timestamps of old ICE press releases to make them appear current, and allowing celebrities like Dr. Phil to accompany ICE raids. And let's not forget, Kristi Noem's infamous photo op at CECOT, where she posed in front of a cell with numerous shirtless prisoners behind her, forced to display their tattoos. This isn't just about enforcement. It's about dehumanization. It's about turning human suffering into entertainment and immigrants into something less than human. The goal is more than just removing people from the country. It's to create a climate of fear, so pervasive that it affects everyone, citizens and non-citizens alike. But while the administration celebrates these deportations as victories. The real world consequences are forcing a harsh reckoning with economic reality. The economic fallout initially forced Trump to dial back some enforcement. After complaints from farm and hotel owners, Trump posted on truth social in mid-June that changes are coming to protect farmers. Acknowledging that his very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good long-term workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. The Department of Homeland Security even sent guidance telling agents to hold on all work site enforcement operations on agriculture, restaurants, and operating hotels. But the reprieve was short-lived. Just days later, DHS reverse that guidance. Why? Because Steven Miller, the mastermind behind Trump's immigration policy opposed any carve outs for industries that rely on immigrant workers. By June 11th, ICE was back to conducting coordinated raids at farms in Central California and meat packing plants in nebraska. The scope of these raids has even some Republicans expressing concern. Representative David Valadao of California urged the administration to prioritize the removal of known criminals over the hardworking people who have lived peacefully in the Central Valley for years. The impacts of all of this are immediate and severe. Farms across California. Georgia and Florida report up to 70% worker shortages. Crops are rotting in the fields. Food prices are rising. Construction projects are stalled or canceled for lack of workers. Healthcare facilities are closing units. 40% of home health workers are foreign born. These losses are affecting American citizen jobs as well. Some experts estimate that for every 1 million undocumented immigrants deported 88,000 citizens could lose their jobs. We're also losing billions in tax revenue. Undocumented immigrants paid nearly 100 billion in taxes in 2022. Business groups from the US Chamber of Commerce, tech and Agriculture are warning that mass deportation could cost the US nearly$1 trillion over a decade. So where does this leave us? In the five months since Trump's return, we've witnessed a systematic dismantling of constitutional protections, the militirazation of immigration enforcement and the weaponization of fear against entire communities. This isn't about immigration policy anymore. This is what kind of country we want to be. When a four and 10-year-old American citizen with cancer are expelled from the country and denied medical care. When legal permanent residents are detained without warrants for their political speech. When the president tries to rewrite the Constitution by executive order. We've crossed a line that no previous administrations have ever crossed. This approach violates everything America claims to stand for. But let's also remember something important. This isn't sustainable. The costs are massive. Nearly a hundred billion dollars per year to enact mass deportation. Another a hundred billion dollars a year or more from the economic disruption. And the legal challenges are mounting. The resistance building against all of this. It's about protecting immigrants for sure, but American democracy as well. The goal is to offer clear alternatives while standing firm on fundamental human rights and constitutional principles. As we witness what is happening, we have to remember that we are better than this. We have been better than this, and we can be better than this again. Here's what I want you to keep in mind. This story isn't over. The fight for America's soul is happening right now in courtrooms and classrooms, in churches and community centers, in protests and voting booths. And each of us gets to decide. What role will we play? History teaches us that it only takes 3.5% of a population engaged in sustained action to create transformational change. And no movement that reached that threshold has ever failed. It's not a matter of capability, it's a matter of will. Over these four episodes, we've traced the long arc of American immigration from our founding contradictions to today's breaking point. We've seen how every generation has faced a choice between fear and hope, between closing our doors and keeping them open. The stakes of that choice have never been higher. In a global economy, in a world facing climate change and political instability. America's ability to attract the world's best and brightest isn't just an advantage. It's a necessity. We can choose to be the country that turns inward, that builds walls and deports families, or we can choose to be the country that lives up to the ideals enshrined on the Statue of Liberty. A place that solves problems, creates opportunity, and remains a beacon of hope for people around the world. As we close this series, I wanna leave you with the words of Ronald Reagan, a Republican and a conservative. But in his final presidential address, he said it best about what makes America great. The doors are closing. The question is, will we fight to keep them open? Thank you for listening to Connecting the Dots. If you found this series on immigration helpful, please consider sharing it and subscribing. Until next time, stay curious, stay critical, and stay connected. I.