A Conversation With Jeh Johnson

This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and Kurturre Latino US Latin Latino USA. I'm Maria Inojosa. We bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered to you, overlooked by the wrestler media, and while the country is struggling to deal with these, we listen to the stories of Black and Latino Studio United Latino Front, a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of the movement. I'm Maria Inojosa. Nose Bayan or La Latino Usa. Listener, Here's an episode

We're in the middle of a crisis on our southern border, the unprecedented surge of illegal migrants from Central America.

In recent years, the US Mexico border and immigration policy have been front and center in the public conversation.

We have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it's unacceptable.

But a humanitarian crisis at the border and the fierce debate over the appropriate government response is nothing new. Jay Johnson was the Secretary of Homeland Security during President Obama's second term, from late twenty thirteen through twenty seventeen, when tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children and families were arriving at the border asking for asylum.

Were here to update you on the steps we are taking to address the surge and unaccompanied children along our nation southwest border.

As Secretary of Homeland Security, Johnson expanded the detention of women and children seeking asylum by putting them into family detention facilities. This expansion of family detention would become one of the most controversial policies of the Obama administration. Secretary J. Johnson toward a temporary detention facility where currently four hundred women and their children are Anna was.

There, Well, really, he wants to send a message, primarily to these immigrants and to the countries from which.

They are coming, that if you come here.

You will be detained and you will be deported.

J Johnson was criticized for what many saw as an overly putative response to a humanitarian crisis.

Obama had ordered Homeland Security Secretary J. Johnson to look into ways he could take executive action to scale back deportations, after several rights groups dubbed him the deporter in chief.

At the time, j Johnson said that he expected family detention to be a determ for families considering migrating to the US.

And I agree with you, Congressman, that we have to put in place, and I think we're doing this a number of deterrent factors. Increased housing to detain parents, adults who come to this country with their children, expedited removals.

Many have questioned the effectiveness of these deterrens in light of the ongoing crisis at the border. Immigration is, of course an issue that we've been covering here at Latino USA for decades, So we had some pretty tough questions for the former secretary. You have no second guesses?

Well, are there things that we could have done differently now that I'm a lot smarter sitting here in midtown Manhattan, Yes, of course, But what you know, I shouldn't have said that because you're new. You're going to follow up good question.

In our conversation, we talk about his legacy and how his policies may have had an impact in current immigration enforcement. Under Trump. Secretary Johnson, thank you so much for joining us on LAT you know USA.

Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to our discussion really absolutely. I love public radio. I even guest DJ once a year for WBGO Newark.

So the thing that people didn't know about Secretary former Secretary Department Film Land Security is that you are a huge jazz and R and B official.

People who listen to that station though.

That actually leads me to my first question, because you know, getting access to the head of the Department of Homeland Security is not an easy task, and so why are you being so open and accessible.

I'm going to be I'm going to tell you a little secret. If you had approached me under the same circumstances three years before, I would have given you the same response. But over the last twenty six months since leaving office, I have tried to speak out where I think it is appropriate, where I have something to offer, particularly around some of the issues that I know we're going to discuss, because there's seems to be so few people who are willing to try to talk common sense

So Jay Johnson is a black kid who grows up in New York City, and I was like, I want to know a little bit more about that kid.

Well, I was born September eleventh, nineteen fifty seven. No, you're nine. Eleven oh one was my forty fourth birthday. I was born here in New York, lived for the first six years in Corona, Queens. Louis Armstrong lived around the block. It was in the fifties sixties, really an enclave for African Americans who had left Manhattan, who had

You go to Morehouse, tell me to House College. Why was it important for you? Interesting question to Morehouse.

Interesting question is probably one of the most important turning points of my life. As a black kid growing up in a principally white community, I had very few role models. And I was a C and D student all through high school. And when I went to Morehouse, it was one of the few times in my life when I said to myself, this feels immediately right to me. I feel very much at home on the campus of Morehouse College.

So you become assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. You then get involved with the Clinton administration, then start working with the Obama administration as General Counsel of the Department of Defense. So obviously you were not surprised when you end up being named the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

I was surprised. I was stunned. What was your reaction at that point, Well, I'll give you a little bit of detail. I had left government and I was on business in Hong Kong, and I received a phone call from the Chief of Staff, Dennis McDonough, who said, Jay, the President would like you to be our next Secretary of Homeland Security. And I was really surprised, and I said, Dennis, really,

So when you take over for Janet Napolitan, who the outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security, you were taking over a department that had a record number of people who were being deported, double the number of people being prosecuted for re entry, over two hundred thousand people in federal prison just for crossing the border. So you were walking into a real conundrum of problems in terms of immigration. So what did you as the head of the Department of

On immigration early twenty fourteen, there was a confluence of what I would say were three events. One, we were working with the Congress to try to get comprehensive immigration reform passed. Second, we had the spike in migration from Central America in early twenty fourteen, spring twenty fourteen, early summer twenty fourteen. Third, as you will recall, President Obama was being heavily criticized for being the so called deporter in chief because of the numbers of deportations, and that

What was the president saint?

What was?

And you say he was stung by being called the deporter in chief.

He had recited all of the things that we were trying to do to achieve comprehensive immigration reform that he had the gun Dhaka in twenty twelve, and we wanted to see path the citizenship codified into law. But nevertheless, we walked away from the meeting with a direction to me to make our system of immigration enforcement more humane.

So let's talk about twenty fourteen. When did you become aware of the fact that children without their parents were coming to the United.

States Mother's Day, May eleven, twenty fourteen. I had been hearing reports of unaccompanied kids entering our country. I had been watching the numbers rise in the course of my first few months in office, and in May twenty fourteen, I was told it has reached crisis proportions and we went to McCallum. We went to the Border Patrol holding station there and it was flooded. And my first reaction, frankly,

Coming up on Latino USA, we continue talking about the crisis at the border family separation, and our conversation gets tense. Secretary Johnson, have you ever thought about apologizing for your role in kind of creating the immigration detention problems situation crisis that we have now no stay with us. Hey, we're back and we're talking today with former Secretary of

Our message absolutely is don't send your children unaccompanied on trains or through a bunch of smugglers. We don't even know how many of these kids don't make it.

More than sixty eight thousand miners were apprehended between twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen. In this second part of our interview with Jay Johnson, we talk about the way his administration responded to the crisis. We also talk about his

So our response to any situation like this has to have a humanitarian component to it. We should hope to treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves. The other aspect of that is is we have sovereign borders. Our borders are not open. There are laws to enforce. When you have border patrol infrastructure built to accommodate a population of x and it ends up being x times four,

I think many people might not like that term.

But you know, because we cannot have a system of catch and.

Release, right people say, well, they're not animals.

You just can't have a system of catching release. The message and goes out that essentially our borders are open. Family detention was not popular in a lot of quarters. I was acutely aware of that and always asking our people, Hey, are we doing this the right way? Is there an alternative?

Can you tell me where you understand the humaneness that you wanted to achieve in your policy, How you were perceiving that holding families who had essentially were not criminals in any way, shape or form crossing a border, how that reflects the humanity that you wanted to with them.

Exceptions. Fundamentally, people migrants desperate too for a better life coming from Central America are not They're not criminals, So then why there are people desperate Because we don't have open borders. We don't have catch and release.

So you said that the idea of family detention should be seen in fact as a deterrent for other mothers and children to not cross the border. Do you think, though, that, in fact it ended up paving the way for what became Trump's zero tolerance policy Families cannot be held.

I would disagree with that. That was the Trump administration's own idea, independent of anything we did. The principal reason for expanding our detention capability is simply because the numbers were rising and we had to have some idea of who was entering our country and there were some people who were appropriate to be detained. Did that serve as

So, J Johnson, citizen, what do you think is the intention behind Donald Trump's zero tolerance policy in terms of immigrants and immigration?

And well, you'll have to ask Donald Trump.

And John citizen. As you're kind of looking at this having been on the inside.

Okay, so it's a very good discussion. Having owned this problem for three years, I know a couple of lessons. One, real and perceived changes in enforcement policy have the effect of causing downturns in illegal immigration. But and here's the big butt, Maria, But so long as the underlying conditions, that underlying push factors in Central America persist, the overall pattern is always going to revert back.

So Secretary, I don't know. I mean, when I think about my experience of covering immigration and meeting Central America and migrants, you know, most people really do not want to leave. And I have yet to find any migrant who is telling me oh, I was checking my phone to find out what the policy was in the United States in order to determine when I was going to leave. Usually it's an extraordinary crisis that lends someone to make

Well, here's the reality. Everyone wants a black or white answer. Either detain everyone or detain no one. It's not that simple, and people are very mindful of because the coyotes, the smugglers will publicize this and encourage this. What will happen when I get here? Will I be detained? Will I be released? And so if we were to say, if we were to declare publicly, if you come here, you

I just think that most migrants are. It's a very complicated situation. And in fact, recently I was on the border. We were in Brownsville, we were in McCallan, and then we crossed over into Matamoros and spoke with some of the people who were waiting to cross over. Let's let's just take a listen to this.

Why did you live on Duras Jodsa.

He told me that he left on Dudas because his daughter had been raped, that his house had been burned down, and that they were now living on the street, and that he never thought he would be in this situation with people treating him poorly, just because he was a desperate migrant. And then he was holding back his tears and he said to me, we came in search of protection. And then he said to the US government, if you hear this, have mercy. We didn't come because we wanted to come.

Filicojo thing up Nome.

So that kind of falls in the face of what you're saying, which has.

Had that conversation with hundreds of migrants on the border after they're apprehended. I always ask why did you come here? I always want to hear their stories, and first and foremost the reason people leave Central America. Are the conditions that we just heard. No one's questioning that it's a powerful reason why people flee, and many people qualify for asylum, but a lot don't.

Secretary, what is it like when you hear the criticism that that actually the Obama administration, the country's first black president, actually laid the seeds in terms of what people call the immigration, detension, deportation mass industrial complex. That, yes, it's It didn't start under Obama, didn't start under George W. It started under Bill k actually with the nineteen ninety

Well, the high for illegal migration on our southern border was the year two thousand, nineteen years ago, and it is now a fraction of what it used to be. The year two thousand was when Bill Clinton was president. It's now a fraction of what it used to be, although today as we speak, it's becoming an increasingly large fraction. Highest we've seen in twelve years. Do I have any second guesses or about the investments that our government has made over the last nineteen years in security in our

You have no second guesses?

Well, no, do I regret that we've made the investments we've made?

No?

Are there things that we could have done differently now that I'm a lot smarter sitting here in midtown Manhattan, Yes, of course.

But what well, when you sit and you say regrets, well.

They're always you know, I shouldn't have said that because you're new, You're going to follow up good question.

Well, it means. What it means to me, Secretary, is that when you're alone in your midtown office or you know whatever, that you are in fact sitting here saying whoa what happened here?

No, it's not quite that way, Maria. No, it's are there things that I would do differently with the benefit of hindsight when it comes to our immigration mission, our cybersecurity mission, our counter terrorism mission with the benefit of hindsight? Yes, of course, But we're always smarter in retrospect. I hope this administration learns some lessons from its own experiences, because it clearly has not learned many lessons from history from prior administrations.

So seeing how President Trump has enacted his immigran policies, essentially making it the centerpiece of his campaign now his reelection campaign. Do you think that things would be different today if the Obama administration in fact had passed immigration reform.

We came very close in the House to passing comprehensive immigration reform and it did not happen. So by fall of twenty fourteen, at the direction of the President, we launched a series of executive actions to do the best we could to reform our immigration system, which included a doc A like program for parents of US citizens lawful permanent residents who had been in this country a number

You will admit, though, that many of the criminals who are considered criminals people who have just committed fraud.

Well, the priorities in the policy we released in November twenty fourteen focused most sharply on convicted felons, not people who commit a crime simply by crossing the border illegally.

But fraud would be one of those crimes criminal robbery, but basically, every single undocumented immigrant in the United States of America has committed fraud. That would make every single level.

That's not the way we looked at it. That would be wrong. Now, that would not be the way we looked at it. That's not the way I told our enforcement personnel to carry out the priorities.

So you know, I'm a professor of Latino studies. Well, I'm a Mexican immigrant. I have sixteen jobs, so one of them is I'm also a professor. And one of the things, thank you, One of the things that I hear from my students, many of them are first generation

Whoever occupies the office a President of the United States or the office of Secretary of Homeland Security, whether you're black, you're white, Latino, or of any other race, religion, or national origin, has a responsibility to enforce the law as they exist. That was something that President Obama and I took very seriously. There are solutions to this problem area. There are solutions that are obtainable, and they're not easy fixes,

Secretary Johnson, have you ever thought about apologizing for your role in kind of creating the immigration detention problems situation crisis that we have now.

No, are these issues controversial? Yes? Are people unhappy with the way in which laws or enforced policies are administered? Yes, on both sides, without a doubt, these were extraordinarily difficult issues. I handled them. President Obama handled them as best we could with what we had to work with.

What would be the one thing that you're like, the thing that kind of keeps you up at night? What worries you now?

What worries me now is that this administration seems unwilling or unable to learn from the experiences of the past. One of the things I did when I was in office during that summer twenty fourteen during Spike, was calling my Republican predecessor, Mike Tchurdoff and asked him, listen, how did you deal with this when you were in office? And I learned a lot from him. This administration doesn't seem to be interested in doing that.

Secretary J. Johnson, thank you so much for joining me on Latino USA.

Okay.

J Johnson served as Secretary of Homeland Security from twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen under President Barack Obama. This episode was produced by Miguel Marcias and Maggie Frieling. It was edited by Fernande Camarena and Marlon Bishop. It was mixed by Stephanie Lebau. The Latino USA team also includes Victoria Estrada Rinaldo, LEANOZ Junior, Andrea Lopez Gruso, Don mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi and Nancy Trujillo. Ramirez

Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising Simons Foundation, Unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities More at hsfoundation dot org, The Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, and Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden.

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