• The Trump administration spends a lot of time trumpeting all the ways it’s cracking down on immigrants in the United States. From the very public raids in sanctuary cities that defined the first few weeks of Trump’s second term, to sending Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem down to El Salvador this week to pose in front of alleged gang members at a massive prison, the White House wants people to believe it’s nabbing all the bad guys. But arrest data shows that we may be seeing a shift in who the administration is targeting for deportation. Ted Hesson, immigration reporter for Reuters, explains what’s happening on the ground.
• And in headlines: The Health and Human Services Department said it wants to lay off 10,000 full-time employees, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggests the Justice Department won’t pursue criminal investigations over Signal-gate, and President Trump withdrew his nomination of Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

• Check out Ted’s reporting– https://www.reuters.com/authors/ted-hesson//
• Read the op-ed co-authored by the detained Tufts student – https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj
• Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8
• Support victims of the fire – votesaveamerica.com/relief
• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/

TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, March 28th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that is stunned that President Donald Trump didn’t throw out the first pitch Thursday for the Washington Nationals. I am shocked and surprised that our fit, athletic president didn’t make an appearance. Sad. [music break] On today’s show, the Health and Human Services Department says it wants to lay off 10,000 full-time employees. And the fallout from Signalgate continues, even as the White House tries its damndest to make it all go away. But let’s start with immigration. Now, if you listen to the Trump administration, everything on the immigration front is, you guessed it, awesome. They’re getting all the bad guys and America is being made great again, or something. Here’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt talking about the arrest of an alleged MS-13 gang leader on Thursday with a level of enthusiasm I find deeply worrying coming from anyone over the age of 10. 

[clip of Karoline Leavitt] This is what happens when you have competent federal leadership at the top, working with state and local law enforcement on the ground to put bad guys in jail. And this is a directive that has come from President Trump here at the White House to law enforcement agencies across the country. This president has your back, and he is going to support you as you pursue illegal immigrants and you pursue violent criminals in American communities. 

Jane Coaston: But things are not awesome. Actually, things are pretty fucked up for undocumented people, for people with legal permanent status, even for American citizens. Take El Salvador, where the administration has been sending allegedly undocumented migrants, including possible members of a Venezuelan gang, to a super prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center. The administration is very proud of this fact. So much so that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the facility on Wednesday and of course made a video about it, using the people in prison there as background props. 

[clip of Kristi Noem] If you come to our country illegally. This is one of the consequences you could face. First of all, do not come to our country illegally, you will be removed and you will prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people. 

Jane Coaston: That same day, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit kept in place a temporary block on deporting people under an 18th century wartime law that was used to remove them from the country. But American citizens are getting caught up in Trump’s immigration dragnet too. Earlier this month, according to multiple reports and Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, an American citizen was arrested by ICE agents in Virginia, despite his efforts to show them his ID, and was only released after being handcuffed and questioned. Oh and let’s not forget the administration’s efforts to expel legal permanent residents and visa holders for protesting the war in Gaza. The most recent example? On Tuesday, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University was arrested near Boston and sent to an ICE facility in Louisiana. She was here on a student visa. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell described her arrest as a, quote, “Ambush.” Her crime, co-authoring an op-ed in her student newspaper asking Tufts to divest from Israel or according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, causing a, quote, “ruckus.” 

[clip of Marco Rubio] If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you’re coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you wanna participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus. We’re not gonna give you a visa. If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the Unites States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re gonna take away your visa. And once you’ve lost your visa, You’re no longer legally in the United States, and we have a right, like every country in the world has a right to remove you from our country. So it’s just that simple. 

Jane Coaston: Rubio went on to say the administration has revoked more than 300 student visas. 

[clip of Marco Rubio] We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa. 

Jane Coaston: Remember, this is the free speech administration. Just as long as your free speech doesn’t cause a ruckus. We will post that op-ed in our show notes, FYI. So to get into what Trump’s immigration enforcement looks like on the ground, I spoke with reporter Ted Hesson. He covers immigration for Reuters. Ted, welcome to What a Day. 

Ted Hesson: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: So Secretary Noem is scheduled to be in Mexico today as part of her three country tour, but we have to start with her Wednesday visit to this super max prison in El Salvador where the Venezuelans being deported by the US are held. These are people who the US says are gang members. What exactly did she accomplish with this visit besides creeping me out? And really what’s the goal with this whole Latin American trip? 

Ted Hesson: This was Secretary Noem’s first international trip. And I think it sets a tone that she’s prioritizing immigration. We’ve actually seen that across the board amongst President Trump’s lead political appointees, where they’ve tried to put immigration front and center. Um. Of course, with all the controversy around the flights and the use of the Alien Enemies Act to send these Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, it’s really boosted the prominence of the storyline. and I think that in some ways, you know, she’s there and capturing the moment and promoting this even further and trying to further kind of raise the awareness of what they’ve done. That said, it was what a tour of the prison, this prison that’s known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. It’s called Cecot in um Spanish. And it’s this the tour–

Jane Coaston: And it’s the largest, is it one of the largest prisons in the world, correct? 

Ted Hesson: That’s my understanding. I mean, I know it’s a 40,000 person capacity, or that’s what they say it holds, which must put it in that sort of rank. It’s what you might call a mega prison. And the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, says that it’s used to hold essentially the worst of the worst criminals there, and people that he says will not get out. So it has a sort of fearsome and notorious reputation as um a black hole, really, for detainees who go in there. 

Jane Coaston: Great and about those deported Venezuelans. The administration says they were targeted for deportation because they’re suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua. Has the administration provided any more information about how it determined that? Because we heard from the administration earlier this week that not being on a watch list could just be a sign that they were secretly gang members or something like that. 

Ted Hesson: The Trump administration says that they sent 238 Venezuelan men to El Salvador who were, as you mentioned, alleged members of Tren de Aragua. They’ve put very little information forward about the people they’ve sent. They haven’t shared their names. They haven’ t shared alleged charges or criminal convictions. In one court filing, there was an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who said that many of those who were deported to Venezuela had no criminal records in the U.S. And it did list several crimes that they may have been charged with or convicted of, but it didn’t actually spell out specific cases. So there was no way to look back and see what the criminal record might’ve been or what their criminality might’ve have been. And I should say, family members of some of the men believed to have been sent there have said they’re not criminals and have said, they’re no members of this gang. 

Jane Coaston: On Wednesday, a U.S. appeals court upheld a decision from a lower court judge to temporarily block the administration from deporting migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, that wartime statute that you mentioned. How significant is this? 

Ted Hesson: This is significant in that um the use of this act, which has only been used three times in U.S. history, it was created in 1798 and was used in the War of 1812 and both World Wars, um it’s being used novelly here. It hasn’t been applied in the past specifically against illegal immigration as President Trump is doing right now. So it’s really a test to see, can he use this authority and will it hold up in court? We can expect it’s likely uh that it will eventually be appealed up to the Supreme Court, and then we’ll really get a test of what those nine justices think about this and whether it might be lawful or not. 

Jane Coaston: Moving on to an image that has rattled me and a lot of people, there’s video circulating of immigration officers approaching, arresting, and handcuffing a doctoral student at Tufts University on the sidewalk in broad daylight. Another doctoral student from the University of Alabama, reportedly from Iran, was also apprehended by ICE on Wednesday, according to several reports. What can you tell us about these situations? We know that most of the students being targeted were in some way involved in campus protests against the war in Gaza. or opposition to their universities handling of policies around it. But beyond that, like, why them? 

Ted Hesson: It appears to be a broader effort by the administration to really crack down on this type of speech. And it’s a politicized effort in that it really is kind of taking a stance on the conflict in Gaza and saying that if foreign students are discussing it in certain ways, they’re interpreting that as being pro-Hamas and they’re going to take actions to revoke student visas or potentially revoke green cards. One thing they’ve said over and over again They’re saying that having a green card, having a student visa is a privilege and not a right. And if you violate it in ways that they believe um go beyond the scope of it, then they’ll revoke it. 

Jane Coaston: The Washington Post a few days ago reported that ICE is getting closer to an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to use tax ID info to track people down who might be living here illegally. What does this say about how far the administration is going to go to root people out, especially people who are, to be clear, paying taxes. 

Ted Hesson: One big difference of how the Trump administration has approached immigration in Trump’s second term is that it’s a whole of government approach. And you can see the IRS is involved, the State Department is involved. The Pentagon is a become a huge player. I mean, there really is no agency where the White House does not see some role in the immigration crackdown. 

Jane Coaston: It’s interesting to me because during the election, we kept hearing Trump and others say that they were only going to deport criminals and yet they’re not doing those like big ICE raids that I think a lot of people were worried about yet they are going after students and couples and families, people who do not have a criminal record of any sort, people who even might be asylum applicants or have some sort of legal status, they are being the ones who are arrested, detained and deported. Are we seeing a shift in who the administration is targeting? 

Ted Hesson: Absolutely. And I think on January 20th, when Trump took office, one of the executive orders he signed empowered ICE officers to make more arrests of people who did not have criminal records, who were just immigration violators. And month by month, as we’ve looked at the ICE data, we’re seeing more and more people who are just simply immigration violaters placed into custody. And when you look at, say, the ICE social media account on X or where they’re promoting um what they’ve been doing. They’re focusing heavily on the arrests of people with some sort of criminal charge or conviction. But by the numbers, we’re seeing increases as well as those um who are just simply immigration violators. 

Jane Coaston: I want to give some context because I remember during the Obama administration, President Barack Obama was referred to as the Deporter-in-Chief. And there are a lot of people right now who are very afraid. They’re afraid of massive raids on workplaces, but they’re also afraid of being snatched off the street, people of varying statuses. How is what we’re seeing and hearing different from previous administration like Barack Obama’s when it comes to deporting people? 

Ted Hesson: I think, well, one thing, just by the numbers, we actually saw Trump’s first month in office, he struggled somewhat to get the actual deportation numbers up compared with former President Biden. And part of the reason is that under Biden, there were just many more people crossing the border illegally, and they were taken into custody and then quickly deported. Um. Since Trump’s taken office, those numbers have really gone down to record lows, relatively few people crossing the border in February and then continuing into this month in March. And it’s meant that more of the deportations are people coming from the interior and people who’ve been here longer. So I think the character of that may start to become clearer as time goes on because if you’re deporting more and more people who have been here for long periods of time, there’s different social ramifications and there could be um, well, we may be seeing more and more pushback on it. 

Jane Coaston: As a reporter, you’ve been covering immigration for a long time. What are you hearing from people who are worried about being deported? How worried do they say that they are? 

Ted Hesson: You hear mixed things, but you certainly do hear concerns. I think that um, you know, I’ve heard from people who are Venezuelan, who’ve seen what’s happened to Venezuelans recently, um not just sent to El Salvador as what we talked about, but previously sent to Guantanamo Bay, to the U.S. Naval base there. We’re seeing more and more people detained at routine check-ins at ICE. These are things that people would have previously done for months or years before, and gone and checked in with no problem. so I think there’s a feeling amongst anyone who might not have a permanent status that they could potentially be subject to immigration enforcement. Ted, thank you so much for joining me. 

Ted Hesson: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with reporter Ted Hesson. He covers immigration for Reuters. We will link to his work in our show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines.

[clip of Pam Bondi] It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released. And what we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission. 

Jane Coaston: Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested she has no plans to have the Justice Department look into the Signalgate scandal that’s embroiled many of our top national security officials. Bondi was asked about potential DOJ involvement during a press conference Thursday. She responded by repeating the company line that the information in the chat was not classified, and then pivoted to but her emails. 

[clip of Pam Bondi] If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton’s um home that she was trying to bleach bit. Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage that Hunter Biden had access to. This was not classified information. And we are very pleased with the results of that operation. 

Jane Coaston: She did not mention the classified documents President Donald Trump may have kept next to a Mar-a-Lago toilet. And a reminder, it’s been nine years since Hillary Clinton ran for anything. Nine years. I was a child then. Anyway, the chat in which high-level officials like National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed detailed military plans ahead of imminent strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen also accidentally included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic. Oops. It’s unclear what, if any, consequences the Trump administration will face for what it’s called a, quote, “mistake.” Top officials within the administration are singing in unison about how there is nothing to see here, but some cracks are starting to show. Also on Thursday, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee signed a joint letter asking the Acting Inspector General to investigate what happened. and a DC federal judge ordered top cabinet officials to preserve all messages from the signal group chat between March 11th and 15th. The decision came after a government watchdog group, American Oversight, sued members of the chat group for allegedly violating the Federal Records Act. That law requires federal officials to preserve official government records. Oh, and the judge assigned to that case? Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court in DC, also happens to be overseeing the legal proceedings tied to another Trump administration mess, the one we talked about earlier, regarding the deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. We’ll emphasize, as the judge did during the hearing, that cases are assigned via an automated system. He’s just a lucky guy. The White House has withdrawn New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In a post on Truth Social Thursday, President Trump said he asked Stefanik to stay in Congress. He wrote, it’s, quote, “essential that we maintain every Republican seat,” and that, quote, “there are others that can do a good job at the United Nations.” Elise Stefanik, hardest hit. Stefanik was Trump’s first cabinet nominee. Her confirmation had been delayed over concerns about Republican’s slim house majority. Right now, they can’t really afford to lose any votes if they want to pass legislation without Democrats. Republicans also won’t have to white-knuckle it through another special election to fill her seat. The announcement comes ahead of two special elections in Florida next week, for seats vacated by now-National Security Advisor Mike Walz and Representative Matt Gaetz, who flamed out after Trump nominated him for Attorney General. But, not to worry. Trump said Stefanik, a longtime ally of the president, is fantastic and cushioned the blow by writing, quote, “I look forward to the day when Elise is able to join my administration in the future.” As of our recording late Thursday, the White House had not named a replacement. 

[clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less. No American is going to be left behind. 

Jane Coaston: Sure. More federal worker layoffs were announced Thursday, this time at the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. The department said it will lay off 10,000 full-time employees as part of a broader reorganization effort. That’s on top of the roughly 10,000 workers who have already accepted the Trump administration’s offer for deferred resignations. Two agencies within HHS will be hit particularly hard by all the cuts, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agencies combined will lose about 6,000 people. In a video posted to Twitter Thursday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this is all for the greater good. 

[clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] The real overhaul is improving the health of the entire nation to make America healthy again. 

Jane Coaston: So if you do the math, we’re losing about 20,000 people who help monitor disease outbreaks, study human health, check our food and medicine, and run Medicare and Medicaid because Kennedy thinks too many people work those jobs. 

[clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] I think most Americans would agree with me that throwing more money at healthcare isn’t going to solve the problem, or it would have solved it already. 

Jane Coaston: On Wednesday, HHS also abruptly canceled $12 billion in federal health grants to states, money that helps them track diseases and pay for services for mental health and addiction treatment. Among those terminated grants were a handful going to public health departments in West Texas. Local health officials say that money was helping pay for the response to the ongoing measles outbreak there. On an absolutely related note, I’m going to get every vaccine possible when I get off work. You know, while we still have people to administer them safely. The Social Security Administration said it will partially walk back its plan changes to the way recipients verify their identities to get benefits. The agency announced earlier this month a new anti-fraud measure. It would require applicants who can’t verify their identity online to do so in person at a field office and not over the phone. The rule change prompted heavy backlash, considering that it asks disabled and elderly Americans to either become tech savvy, eew. Or travel god knows how far to a social security office just to apply for benefits like Medicare. In a statement Wednesday, the Social Security Administration said it would push back the start of those changes until mid-April, and it created some exemptions to the policy. Those applying for Medicare, disability benefits, and supplemental security income will still be able to verify their ID over the phone. The change came one day after the American Federation for the Blind met with Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek to communicate their obvious concerns about how this would make social security benefits virtually inaccessible for some people. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing, the White House Easter egg roll. It’s an annual tradition in which the President of the United States stands next to a giant bunny while tons of kids play on the White House lawn. It dates back to the 1870s and the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, who served one term as president, refused to run for reelection, and just went home to Ohio to hang out for the rest of his life. Admirable. Anyway, the Trump administration announced Monday that like basically everything else in President Donald Trump’s life, The White House Easter egg roll is now a branding opportunity. 

[clip of unnamed news reporter] The White House, through an outside production company called Harbinger, is soliciting corporate sponsorships for this year’s Easter Egg Roll. They range from $75,000 to $200,000 and offer logo and branding opportunities. 

Jane Coaston: The administration says the money will go to the White House Historical Association, but ethics experts have some concerns. See, for Donald Trump, pretty much everything is a branding opportunity. Everything, and I mean everything, is a chance for Donald Trump and members of his family and people he likes to make money. I mean, let’s talk about cryptocurrency. First, there were Donald Trump and Melania Trump meme coins launched in January, which are crypto tokens based on internet memes because sure. And they pulled in a ton of actual money from actual people. Here’s the Wall Street Journal to explain. 

[clip of unnamed Wall Street Journal reporter] The Trump coin launced at basially zero. And in just a few hours it achieved a market value as high as 15 billion.

Jane Coaston: That is billions of dollars for Trump memes. And the crypto adventures don’t end, because on Tuesday, the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial, announced that it was launching a stablecoin. A stablecoin is a crypto token intended to maintain a specific value, though they often don’t actually do that. And keep in mind that World Liberty Financial is led by the trusted team of Donald Trump’s sons and a group of people who used to run a company called Date Hotter Girls and a get-rich-quick online course. But really, did you expect anything else? Here’s the thing. I know it seems pretty obvious at this point, and maybe it’s cringe to say it, but um none of this is normal or good, not one bit. It is not good to be using the White House to make money. And let’s not even get into how this administration is trying to help Elon Musk, the richest man on the face of the earth, make more money. The Commerce Secretary urged people to buy Tesla stock on Fox News for Pete’s sake. The Trump administration sees its job as selling Donald Trump to anyone who will buy. And regrettably, that seems to be working for him. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, celebrate the weekend by contemplating that Ontario premier Doug Ford said he wants to quote, “inflict as much pain as possible on Americans because of tariffs,” and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how we used to have a totally normal relationship with Canada, we’d beat them in basketball, we lose to them in hockey, and we’d read Anne of Green Gables and think, huh, sounds like a nice place, like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and sorry Canada, things are getting weird, but I still think you’re cool. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.