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Jfi AM six forty Bill Handled here it is a footy Friday, October twenty four I got a story I want to share with you, and this has to do with a federal judge just issued a tentative ruling ordering that immigrant detainees.
Have access to legal counsel.
And this had to do with Lindsey has a friend that she's known for many, many years, and her whole sort of circle of friends are absolutely devastated because one of her friends married to a Hispanic guy. I think he's twenty nine years old, came to the US when he was thirteen, and his mother came there because his aunt, his mother's sister, I had been murdered the Narco trophic conte one of the gangs and then dropped off in front of their house with her tongue cut off. So
they came to the United States and not legally. He's been with attorneys for ten years trying to figure it out. Anyway, he was just picked up and he's at a detention center, and of course everybody is going nuts and of course, we're only going after the worst of the worst. That's the part that really is completely insane.
All right, just wanted to share that with you.
Now, let's move over to what a federal judge just did issued a order that immigrant immigrant detainees have access to legal counsel. And so the government is in front of the judge, and what this does is extend a temporary restraining order that US District judge I don't want to go through her name, issued in July, requiring federal immigrant agencies allow legal visitation at their detention facilities seven
days a week now when someone is in jail. All right, just to let you know, if someone is in prison or jail, an attorney shows up at three am in the morning, they get access to their client. They get access twenty four to seven. And the argument here was that it wasn't happening. So the government attorney argues that evidence shows detainees let me get this, I want to get this quote correctly, our meeting with attorneys, they have access to counsel, and conditions of confinement are not an
issue before the court, because that's the other argument. There is virtually no sanitation. They are living in cots. They don't have access to their council and they're living in these horrible conditions, and the government attorney says, that's not what's that issue here was that issue is access to legal counsel. And by the way, they do have access.
Straight out, that's just not true. They have access. And that's what's pretty tough about what's going on here, where the judge said, the court say one thing, and it is it almost doesn't matter for this administration. There was a story on sixty minutes was this past Sunday where a guy who is ahead of the ethics whatever department he was, he had moved himself up and had been with a doj and he just quit.
He couldn't take it anymore.
And what he said was there were court orders that were not being followed where he talked about superiors coming into rooms and you know, putting programs together and having entire departments meet. And they basically said, ignore what.
The judges say. One one of them. This was the accusation that was made.
Do you remember when the flight was going on to El Salvador and Abrago was on that flight and he was delivered and the judge said, you have to stop everything.
Well, the order was the while he was on the flight.
One of the illegal detainees, and the argument in front of the court uh, and the attorney was or actually it was the official was asked, did you know this was happening? And he said no, I had no idea. And the accusation was I was in the room when he was told ignore what the court say, and this was what was going to happen this weekend. Some crazy stuff is really happening, and it's really it's tremendously unfortunate, and you're going to see these cases go uh up
to be a Supreme Court. And the argument about the representation, that's your fifth Amendment.
You're you have the.
Government must give you representation when you are picked up.
If you can't afford it, they just have to do it.
So we'll see and then if it goes up to the Supreme Court, which I think it will.
Because this is a Supreme Court issue.
There's so many cases that Supreme Court, the court is being asked to rule on. That's what's happening in the last nine months, and we'll see, we'll see what they do. I think the court is going to go pretty strongly in favor of the administration.
That's what this court's about.
Believes that the president has virtually unbridled power.
Doesn't have to.
Tell anybody if the laws says, if the underwriting underaligning law says that you must follow this procedure. For example, what's going on with the White House right now and that great, big, beautiful, better than most tippy topst ballroom that's going to be better, bigger than anybody who's ever seen. You know that there are laws that say you have to go through a historical society, you have to go through panels.
No, no, I don't. Will the court back it up? You bet?
All right?
So much for that, all right.
The Province of Ontario bought commercials on basically major US television networks, all of them. And what they run, or what those commercials did is run part of a speech by former President Ronald Reagan.
And we're in the.
Middle the Trump administrations, in the middle of negotiations tariff negotiations with the Canada, the provinces as well as the entire country. So cono would you run It's about a one minute clip of that speech that was done in nineteen eighty seven by Ronald Reagan. Oh the ad I'm sorry, the ad which was taken from that speech done in nineteen eighty seven.
When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short violet works, but only for a short time. But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the
triggering of fierce trade wards. Then the worst hackles, market shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions.
Of people lose their jobs. Throughout the world.
There's a growing realization that the weight of prosperity for oign nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. America's jobs and growth are at stake.
Okay, obviously this was a job at President Trump in response to that. Now keep in mind this is a TV ad that was run and the President was so offended that he said, that's it.
I'm done speaking to Canada.
I am going to let the existing tariffs remain. All negotiations are off, they're not very happy with us, because I don't think President Trump ever has walked back his statements about Canada should be our fifty first state and is basically a toilet. The point I'm making on this one is that the Trump folks are arguing that it is fake news. Straight out, it's fake news. And when asked, does that mean AI did it? Does that mean that it didn't exist? Does that mean that there was an
impersonation of a voice? No, it wasn't fake It was edited. And they also argued it was edited, and I'm leading transcripts of the entire speech. Was a long speech, and while it was edited, I'll tell you the basic.
Premise is not changed.
Reagan did speak out against tariffs, and.
A lot of people do.
As a matter of fact, I think Reagan even addressed the issue the Smooth Holly Act, which was passed during the Depression to protect American businesses and it exacerbated the Great Depression. So at this point the President has not back down on, of course, as tariffs, there is an argument among many many people that the tariffs are going to hurt the United States long term, just as many people on the other side say it's going to help
long term for the US. One of the things that tariffs do is that products become so expensive in terms of bringing them into the country that the move is to build factories and produce here in the United States. Now, is that ever going to be as cheap as overseas? Nope, And the reason is building a factory is hideously, hideously expensive here in the States, and they're not going to pay workers three dollars an hour like they do in China or they do in Mexico.
But to Trump's point, is it going to help.
It's certainly going to bring factories and businesses to the United States that it is going to do. Now, whether it's going to work economically, that's up in the air.
But I think what this story.
Effectively says is, don't piss off this president.
Just don't piss them off.
Ask James, call me, ask Leticia James. Do you think he's going to make it illegal for Canada to speak American? I you know, I think he's going to ask the Canada to be thrown out of the UN, and maybe he may even have Canada declared in and of itself illegal. We have illegal aliens and we will have illegal countries. Neil found this article actually from the Wall Street Journal and sent it along.
And what's fascinating about this.
It's about surrogacy, of which obviously I've been heavily, heavily involved throughout.
My entire career was surrogate parenting.
And I wrote my first surrogate parenting contract in nineteen eighty when there were exactly two of us, two lawyers on the planet that were practicing surrogacy law.
So I was there from the very very beginning.
And I was having a conversation with my good friend Mollie, who is an attorney, nice Jewish girl, Molly O'Brien, who is has become one of the premier lawyers in the field. She started working for me administratively, then went to law school and now is a big shot lawyer in this And we talked about this topic and it's a Wall Street Journal topic that here's the title. Surrogacy is a
multi billion dollar business. Sometimes the money goes missing. People are very vulnerable, and there has not been a whole lot of regulation.
Now.
The first California case or the first California piece of legislature I was involved in helping to write, and it set up protections for the surrogate mother, and the money to pay for the surrogate has to be put in escrow, has to be effectively put there up front.
And we used to do this.
My partner and I would create our own escrow company because a lat let us do it. It was the wild West. The problem is it's still the wild West. Even though the law says the money has to be an escrow, it's not a escrow company. The way the regulations of escrow companies are real estate escrow companies, by the way, where money changes hands for real estate, those are very heavily regulated.
And there are bonds involved. Well, not in the.
Case of surrogacy, and there is a huge number of couples who have just been ripped off completely, and there is a case after case. I mean, since you have so many tens of thousands of surrogacy cases that occur every year, and there are hundreds of agencies. Now, I keep in mind, when I started my agency, the Center for Surrogate Parenting, we were basically the first ones out. Now there are hundreds and hundreds, and it's still the
same regulations. Couples are so vulnerable, you know what I compare this to is when a family member dies and you go to the funeral establishment, the mortuary, the cemetery, and you're talking to the salesperson who is selling you the casket, and there you are having just lost someone, a family member.
Talk about vulnerability. You really want to honor your mother, don't you? Yes? And here's how you honor your mother.
You buy the eight thousand dollars casket instead of the four thousand dollars casket. You okay, okay, okay? And the vulnerable aspects of that are incredible. Can you imagine how you want a child? This is in many cases the last shot of having a child and or a child with biological connection, because of course, now with surrogacy, with IVF and egg donation and sperm donation, you have couples that want to create a baby with some genetic component
of the parents. And that's a huge, huge number of people, that's in the hundreds of thousands. And what ends up happening is that the money, if it's done correctly, has to be put up in front.
It has to be paid upfront.
Why well, because the surrogant mother gets pregnant, as you know, and is delivering a baby and what happens if the parents die, What happens if they go bankrupt, what happens if they change their mind? Everybody is frightened about surrogate mothers changing their mind. More parents have changed their minds than surrogate mothers. Let's say a child is born that's
going to be anomaloust. You have a child that is born with some severe or going to have some severe medical issues, and the surrogate mother, and if we've had these say I'm not aborting. There's just not going to be an abortion, and the couples understand that, and they accept that, except when it happens then all of a sudden and they.
Walk out the door. They walk out the door.
I've had one of those in the thirty five years that I did this, and so obviously I took a big interest in this. And I had this conversation a couple of days ago with a friend of mine who is a lawyer and is one of the premier lawyers in the field, and she and I were talking about this topic. I mean, you talk about a coincidence and it has to do with just a whole raft of cases being filed against surrogacy agencies because while the owners
took the money. And you know it happens all the time when owners are you know, when you have business owners that hold onto money or charge or you have accounts, governmental accounts that embezzlement, et cetera. With the point of this is surroget parenting has been around. Well, I started in nineteen eighty imagine going back that far. And as I said in the previous segment, when I started, it was whether.
There were two of us, literally two lawyers.
In the world that we're doing this, and what ended up happening to pay the surrogate to protect the surrogate mother. Even though I represent the parents, the surrogate mother had to be protected. You know what if the parents get hit by a truck. I mean, she's pregnant and good deliver a child and it's not her child. It's not as if she wants to keep the baby. She's doing
this for someone else. So how do you protect the surrogate at least financially, Well, the money goes into a trust account, and in those days we didn't do an escrow account. Eventually we had some laws passed that says the money has to be protected, but still there really is no protection. This is one of the big holes in the world of surrogacy which allows these surrogacy agencies and now there are hundreds of them to hold on to the money and basically keep it, spend it on
personal items for the owners. Even escrow companies, and I put that in quotes. Escro company are not regulated the way they should be. And so let me give you a scenario. This is very handlesque in terms of what I would do with potential clients. We'd sit down and have that first conversation and I would go through the law as it existed and talked about how it really
was the Wild West. And then I said, and I need all of the money for all medical and the payment of surrogate and her attorney and all of her expenses and the amount of renumerations she's going to get. I need it all up front and put into my account, my trust account. And inevitably they would say how much
is it? And I'd go one hundred thousand dollars and I would get an answer or a question like one hundred thousand dollars and you want us to put one hundred thousand dollars in your trust account to begin this process I said absolutely, So you know, we don't even know you, and I would say it's way worse than that. Believe me, and I'll tell you why it's way worse
than that. I happen to be have been born in Brazil, and I am a Brazilian citizen in addition to being an American citizen, and I have family in Brazil, and I speak Portuguese. And if I clean out my trust account and take the money to Brazil, there is no extradition treaty between Brazil and the United States for financial crimes. So I'm sitting on the beach in Rio with your money, having the time of my life.
Now write the check, and they did.
That's the reverse cell, by the way, And so they thought that was so outrageous. But the point is is that obviously I've never had a problem because I've certainly never taken money out of my trust account and embezzled money from clients. Well maybe other clients, but certainly not my surrogacy clients. And it was it's you know, it
was so wild West at that time and it still is. Finally, my contract went up to the Supreme Court, and here I am bragging a little bit but it took I don't know how many years before the court accepted the premise of surrogacy, and that is the intended parents are the parents of the child because we have such technology out there between sperm donation. When I taught third party reproductive law and my first seminar, the first day of class, I would say, okay, let me ask you something. Who's
mom and dad? And people would raise their hands. Well with my parents, I go, okay, let me give you five scenarios of mom and dad and you tell me which one is correct.
You got adoptive mom and dad. Okay, that's one.
You have a dad using his sperm, but donor sperm and mom.
Creates the child who is genetically connected? Whose dad?
Now, certainly we know mom is mom, But is sperm donor dad? Or is the intended father dad? Well, the law covers that sperm donor is not dad.
Okay.
How about in vitro fertilization, when you're using an egg donor, who's mom.
Is it the donor's egg?
Is she mom?
Or the woman who just states the baby? And who is the intended parents? And that's the way I always started the class because the law was it was so crazy, and even though most of it has calmed down where now the contract was upheld by the California Supreme Court saying that the intended parents pursue it to a contract are in fact the parents of the child.
But that's California. Are states all over. This is not regulated federally.
One time a federal bill was introduced, and that was by Henry Hyde. You've heard of the High Amendment. Well, you can't use federal money for abortions. That was Henry Hyde, and he introduced a bill to make what I did a federal felony. And thank goodness, there were some logical people on that subcommittee that said, hey, this is a state issue. You know, can't you can't you know, abortion, adoption, marriage, divorce, parenting is a state issue. The Feds don't get involved
in this. And that disappeared, thank goodness. So the point is it still is unregulated in so many ways as it was when I started. And you know how many years ago, what nineteen eighty to now? Is that forty five years?
Wow? Am I getting old?
Neil? You're getting old too? Except you look, as you say, you look worse than I did.
Is that right? You still look worse than I do. Well, I'll tell your face that that's right. Okay, all right, we're done with that.
Obviously my wheelhouse, and obviously I'm still exercised over all this and engaged in a big, big way, even though I have not been involved for five years. All right, KF I am six forty.
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