Sanctuary Challenges & Little League Visas Denied

immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partnered Honda Knight. He was the head of the Office of Civil Immigration Litigation during the Obama administration. Leon, there's no official definition for sanctuary cities, but can you describe what they are?

initiative to pick up people with criminal violations. That's one, and then the second is cooperation with administrative warrants or what are called detainer requests, which is on the other end, when I actually knows that somebody is in custody in a city or county jail or a state facility, if there's an ordinance that says, well, if ICE issues an administrative warrant, which is a warrant that can be issued just by an ICE agent, it doesn't have to go

to a court, does that compel in any way the city, the county, or the state to actually comply with that warrant. And so what the sanctuary provision say is no, you're not compelled to do anything with that. If there's a federal judicial warrant, fine, then turn the person over to the ICE agent who's showing that federal criminal judicial warrant. But otherwise just release them and don't do anything just because ICE is commandeering you to perform work on its behalf.

And so those are the two things that are commonly meant by sanctuary cities. It's not really that the city itself is in any way sort of creating an amnesty that legalizes undocumented people or anything like that within its borders. What it's posentially saying is it's not going to do anything affirmatively to help the federal government in its mission of trying to deport people who are deportable from the United States.

I'm in Texas that do this. They provide us every day with a list of people that have been arrested. And then ICE goes and says, well, out of these one hundred people on this list, we care about these fourteen, detain them tell us when you're going to release them, call us and we'll come pick them up. And because that doesn't happen, then those let's say fourteen people out of that list from one hundred, ICE has to go

find them. So it would be much easier for ICE if they could just literally be handed that human being and put them in an ICE detention vehicle and put them in an ICE facility. But with you have a law that does not permit that, then those people get released and ICE has to catch them again, just like if they had never had any information about them in the first place. And so as a practical matter, I don't think anybody would dispute that it practically makes the

job of deportation of people with criminal interactions. I can't say criminals because some of these folks who get arrested that are going to be acquitted. So that's one of the other problems is if you say you're deporting a criminal non citizen, the issue is, well, are they actually criminals in the sense but they actually did something that they got convicted for or are they just wrongfully arrested

of something? And then you know, there's the other argument that people make about well, yeah, but they're here illegally, so in and of itself, you can call that person

a criminal. But putting that argument to the side, which is a semantic argument that people debate in the political realm, the point being that that group, whether you care about whether they were convicted or whether you just care that they were arrested and people shouldn't be getting arrested anyway, whatever you think about that group, it is immensely harder to remove anyone in that group in any of the iterations if the cities don't give that information and share it affirmatively with ICE.

in New York. But I set actually placed what was called an immigration detainer on one of the two individuals, meaning they told a New York City jail, please hold this person so we can go pick them up and tell us when you're gonna release them, and that went unanswered. It was like, you know, it's like sending a fax into Mars. You know, if you send the facts to Mars,

nobody is there in Mars andswering that fact. It's the same concept here, So that detainer is ignored, and then this individual who gets arrested then walks out and they commit this crime against the CBP officer for Washington. The argument being if this had been a locality like some of the ones in Florida or in Texas, for sure that ice detainer would have been honored, meaning at least one of the two individuals for sure would have been arrested and detained and would never have been able to

commit this crime. But even the second one, who didn't have an ICE detainer, had New y York had an especially cooperative relationship with ICE, and it would have even given this second person the moment they were arrested, affirmatively the information to ICE and said, hey, please do us a favor and pick up this person because we're really

trying to enforce the immigration law. And so depending on the scenario, either one or both would have been apprehended and would not have been free to commit that crime.

and immigration status. And so the point is what does that mean. Does that mean only that issue, meaning just number one, are you a citizen? Are you here legally? Or does it mean a bigger basket of information? Are you detained? What time are you going to be released? Where are you detained, what crime did you commit? Et cetera.

And so that say debate now, to be fair to the states and the cities and the counties, this debate has been had in the first Trump administration and now in the second one, and so far the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in, but every other court that has weighed in has said that information is just the very narrow is the person here legally or or not? And is the person a citizen or not? But has nothing to do with this broader basket of information that the federal

government seeks. But nevertheless, that's one argument. Number one, that what the cities and the states and the counties are doing is preempted because they have to provide this information. And then number two, that it's preempted by the supremacy clause because these laws discriminate against the federal government. They give worse treatment to the federal government than they do against others that might ask for this information. They're specifically

targeted towards not sharing information with the federal government. And finally, they actually implicitly regulate the federal government. That's the final argument that has made in these lawsuits, because if you're telling the federal government here's how you have to operate in a particular location. You have to do this, this, and this. In order to get someone from county detention, you have to get a federal warrant. You can't get

a civil warrant, etc. You can't ask for information. You have to stand outside the dail and try to catch people, or stand outside the courts and try to catch people. Then you're regulating the federal government in a way that's in permissible. So those are the arguments that the federal government has made in these cases. But again, to be fair to the states and the localities, they have not been successful at any level district or appellate court so far in winning any of these cases so far.

lawsuit against Chicago and Illinois. I've been talking to immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at Holnden Knight. Leon. The judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying the Trump administration didn't have standing to bring the suit. Tell us about her ruling.

because you're forcing us to do things. And you know you can enforce all the immigration law you want in Chicago, federal government. That's what the city and the county and the state were saying. They're saying, you can enforce all the immigration law you want. We don't have officers shooting at you while you're trying to enforce immigration law, or we don't have officers putting up barricades or hiding people

or anything else. The problem in these cases is you're trying to make us do things that we don't want to do, and so you don't have standing to make us do things that we don't want to do, because the Supreme Court has already held in the famous Prince case, and that was a case where when the Brady Law was passed that developed the national background check system. Until that system was developed, they said for the states and

the localities they had to do the background checks. And then the locality students said, you can't force us to do background checks. We don't want to do that. You know, there were some localities that didn't believe that constitutionally you could have background checks on guns, and so the Supreme Court agreed. They said the federal government cannot force states and localities it's called anti commandeering into implementing federal regulatory programs.

And so that same theory that existed in the case is being applied in these sanctuary city cases, but again in this Chicago case, to say, if you actually are saying you have standing because you're being hurt, you're only being hurt because the cities aren't enforcing the law in the way you want them to. And you can't do that. You can't make a city or a county affirmatively do anything. They can do what they want as long as they're

not interfering. And because there was no finding of interference, then the idea was there's no standing because you can't force them to cooperate. You can only force them to not interfere.

cities doing anything. So, for instance, I don't think the federal government will ever be successful in getting the Supreme Court to say that a city or a county or a state has to affirmatively detain somebody because that's an affirmative action. That's similar to prince. But the question is

on information sharing. Is that going to be something that is covered by prince or will they be able to achieve an information sharing exception which allows the federal government to force states and cities to share information that they have with regard to foreign nationals, i e. Where are they, where they detained, when are they going to be released? And so that is I think the final threat question.

And I would say, given that the Supreme Court has been pretty deferential recently toward Trump's efforts to deport people and to enforce the immigration laws, I would say that that one is not so crazy to think that the Immigration Court might set out an exception for information sharing. Wep the wave and see.

a denaturalization, it is a very resource intensive action. You actually have to get the Department of Justice and I used to work together on filing an actual federal lawsuit against the person, and there actually has to be the equivalent of a trial, and you have to go in and say that a material misrepresentation was made in either the citizenship application or the green card application, such that had that material misrepresentation been known at the time, there's

no way the person would have been approved in their application. And so that's the standard, and it's a very high threshold. There can't be something like oh, you didn't tell us you were in the Elk Club and it turns out you were in the Elk Club, or you didn't tell us you were in the Five Sigma fraternity, and had

we known that, we would have approved you. No, no, no, it has to be something serious, like cases where people either didn't disclose criminal convictions or people didn't disclose certain terrorists or national security issues. Then theoretically there is some argument. Now the question is is this gonna be expanded out to slightly more frivolous groups of people. We're gonna have

to wait and see. But I don't think at least in the short term that's gonna happen, because the Department of Justice at the moment is in a very big crunt in terms of they've lost a lot of lawyers from the department. These cases are very very resource intensive, and so to devote lawyers to these cases when the facts are not so compelling is not going to be

a productive use of their resources. But again, in scenarios where a criminal conviction was not reported or with fake identities, that kind of thing might actually be something where you'd want to do this kind of denaturalization action.

you can the naturalize them that would be his. The Mamdani one would be even more complicated because his would be based off of memberships in certain organizations that they would claim, Hey, this guy was cohorting with terrorist type people and he did disclose this in his application, and so it's similar to the Moot Khalil type of situation.

And even though my Mood Khalils is easier because he's just a Green card holder, but it's the same concept at the end of the day, which is, did you fail to disclose the kinds of affiliations that you had with entities that had you disclosed them, we would never have approved your Green card. And so I think that one will be much more challenging because I don't know if there are any such organizations. I'm not aware of any, but who knows, you know. And then the final case

that's been brought up is Rosi o'donalds. She was born in the United States, so for her they would actually have to find that she committed one of the expropriating acts, which there's only a few of them, which is that you either go to a US embassy and say hey, I don't want to be a citizen anymore, that's the main one, or you take up arms against the US and a war. But she hasn't done any of that, so there is no provision in the law I'm aware

of where Rosie o'donald's citizenship could be taken away. From that perspective, I think.

these kids would come in under. Can't comment United States their band. Now that travel band did have a exception, A literally had one for like the World Cup itself, because I think they understand that. For instance, I think I ran as qualified for the World Cup, and so that one would be very tough if you don't let them in for the World Cup. But secondly, you know, for other things that are in the national interest. So the Venezuelan kids applied for visa and they were denied,

and that was just it. They were not given a chance to get one of these waivers. And so from my perspective, I don't know if this perspective is shared by others in the United States, But even when we had the height of the Cold War with Russia, a nuclear power who was intent on killing us and wiping us off the face of the match, we still let the balls showy ballet perform in New York and we just ban them from the United States. And so somehow

we made it through the Cold War. I think we'd be able to make it through whatever this period is by letting some little kids play baseball. But call me crazy.

also that were reported by news outlets. But you know, I just corroborated with my individual clients who said, we're not going to come in because we're afraid that something will happen to us if we try to enter the United States. I mean, it is a fear that is not justified. Just to be clear, if one looks at this from a statistical level and says, what is the actual chance of something bad happening to me if I

come to visit some of these events. But nevertheless, because of various media coverage and other things, that's happening, and I think the administration needs to be doing more to assuade these concerns. But because that's not happening, then you have these situations where people aren't coming to attend these events. And I don't know what effects it's going to have

on the World Cup next year. We're gonna have to wait and see, but it would be a shame if any of those stadiums were empty, because I think the President himself wants to see a great World Cup. He's very interested in the event. You know, he attends and holds the trophy and everything, and so from that perspective, I would hope that the administration would do what it

can to facilitate sports in the United States. And so I'm hopeful that they will see the error here and let the Venezuelan kids come in, because again, I just don't see the security concern here of letting those kids come in and play baseball for two weeks.

federal civil rights laws. Christopher Rufo is a conservative activist who's been influential in the White House's efforts to reshape higher education, and he now wants to expand that campaign. Joining me is Bloomberg education reporter Liam Knox, who has written about Rufo. So Liam start by telling us a little about Christopher Rufo.

core architect of the anti Dei movement years ago. This position of various conservative think tanks, including the Manhattan Institute where he still works, and Rond de Stantists actually appointed him to the board of the new College, which was a Florida institution where that was basically the proving ground in Florida for a lot of what has now become the Trump administration's nationwide campaign to reshape higher education and reform higher education along their own minds.

protest movements. But it's grown significantly since then. And you see that actually even in the terms of the Columbia settlement that came out last week, they included anti DEI measures, you know, a commitment not to discriminate based on race or sex in various programs, commitment to be transparent in

releasing data around race and merit and admissions. It included a lot of stipulations around international student enrollment, which the Trump Administration's agenda has sort of encompassed as well, and Higher ed with their campaigns to provoke student fisas and curtail international enrollment at American universities. So it's a wide ranging campaign that the administration is waging in the higher sphere, and you know that has kind of always been true.

But in terms of where they're headed next, I think it's just, you know, one of the things that are reporting on this story with RUFO and folks in the Education Department whose ear he has show that it's only set to expand even.

aid funding, things like that. That is the main lever kind of power that they've been using against civic institutions that they're investigating or that they are bringing to the negotiating table around federal funding freezes like Columbia, like Harvard. But you know, those are just a handful of institutions which serve a very comparatively small number of students across

the country. What Ruffo told us basically was that he'd had some at least some level of interest from the Education Department, from the White House in a broader plan to not necessarily threaten every school with the loss of federal funding, but to attach terms similar to those we saw Columbia except last week into basically bake them into federal contracts in research grants, you know, in kind of Title Title six compliance that's basically civil rights low anti

discrimination law. That's another big level that they've been using, and a slew of Department of Justice investigations around that lately. Just today they launched another into Duke University. But you know, basically right now, they've been doing this piecemeal, you know, targeting you know, a few elite institutions here and there, targeting a few dozen in some of these big batches

of civil rights investigations. The most wide ranging effects have been felt in the elimination or the freezing of research funds, because you know, those aren't always targeted at specific universities. There's also been just kind of a lot of spending

cuts in that area. Rufo's plan would basically be a blanket policy for federal funding for all universities, and there's really very few universities that don't take federal funding in some form or another, and so would have a near universal impact on higher education.

to other campuses across the country. And Rufo himself told us that he had circulated the plan among political appointees and senior officials in the White House at the Education Department, that some of them had even helped him draft parts of the plan of the strategy, and so it's certainly not out of the questions to see this becoming policy soon.

When I spoke to the Education Department about it, they basically said that there no implementation in the works, but did not deny that it is a possibility in the future. The one other piece that is not in the formal plan that RUFO spoke with us about is kind of bringing the accreditors into the next here. That's a strategy using a college accreditation which are basically very influential but

largely at least until recently, lying under the radar. Organizations that approve universities to receive federal financial aid, uphold standards of educational quality, make sure that they're financially sound, these institutions, make sure they're not breaking federal civil rights law. These are organizations that just recently that you know, the Trump administration is kind of bringing into its larger campaign against HIRET.

They used it against Columbia. There's a lot of talk about what how that that's another lever another arrow in the quiver of the administration in their bigger campaign here, and that would be extremely universal and that you know, that's something that the Education Department has that folks in the Education Department have discussed and explored before. So you know, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, and it would be enormously impactful.

direct ties to the university. But he does talk about his experience as kind of being like a come to light moment where he became disillusioned with the way that faculty at elite universities teach, with the focus he believes on overly liberal political influence. So I think, you know,

that's all part of his ideological journey. He didn't speak that much about it in his interview with Bloomberg, but you raise a good point It's not just Chris Ruffo who attended elite institutions, it's most of the members of the Trump administration who are making this policy.

aren't really thinking about an endpoint here, you know. I think that one of the things Rufo discussed was that he feels that the Trump administration's agenda on high ED has a popular mandate, an electoral mandate, that DEI is unpopular, that other things that universities culture there you are unpopular, and that reshaping it is something that has popular support.

You know. I guess we'll see if that continues to be true, you know, but that's I think that's the perspective from which these policy makers are approaching.

weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg