Welcome to the nonprofits.
Well, it turns out that Texans aren't the only ones stirring up trouble. This week, in our third segment, we look at how federal agents are sharing in the atrocities. Attorneys from the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois have accused federal immigration authorities of unlawful arrests and constitutional violations in at least twenty two cases since
the current administration's immigration crackdown began. The motion filed in Chicago alleges that ICE agents arrested individuals without probable cause, created warrants after detaining people, and violated the NAVA Settlement to twenty eighteen agreement meant to prevent warrantless arrests. Cases include a US citizen wrongly detained and workers arrested without warrants. Lawyers argue these actions breach federal law and the Fourth Amendment.
ICE declined to comment the stories from the Chicago Sun Times by Adriana Cardona Maguidad on March fourteenth, twenty twenty five. So we'll start off by going to Jimmy here, Jimmy car and you give us some specifics on some of the individuals that have been affected by these improper arrests.
Well, sure, now at this point have heard everybody should have heard, if you're paying attention, that American citizens are just being rounded up. People with permission to be in this country are being rounded up and being targeted to have their protected status if they're not yet citizens removed, if they're political prisoners. For example, the four hundred thousand Venezuelans that are being considered or a move that is now being blocked by one judge, but being considered to
have their protected status removed. Abel Erosco or Tega, detained outside his home in suburban Lions in Chicago without a warrant. He was buying Tomali's. Well, that guy must be a criminal, right of course, of course, yeah, yeah, And then we've got I'm going to butcher this even though I've heard it before. Rumesak, the thirty year old Boston area graduate student who was arrested and detained, who really did nothing wrong.
She wrote an op ed about the Palestinian conflict and in a pro Palestinian form, and of course she was detained by masked men who were unidentified. And then in Liberty, Missouri, twelve restaurant workers barricaded inside a Mexican restaurant. Well, they're restaurant workers in a Mexican restaurant. They must be illegal and they must be criminals, right, but they were. They were closed in by the Department of Homeland Security, who arrested them without a warrant. And so, you know, I
think this is just the beginning. We're at risk and I am I am going to use some really harsh language, but I like to think in terms of extremes, because if we don't, you know, then we let those extremes happen. And it's because we didn't take it seriously enough. But you know, we could be facing a major genosid right here in the United States against light skinned brown people. And if those of us with a voice don't stand up and recognize this wrongdoing, we certainly could be enablers.
And so that's what I have to say on that.
Definitely, I saw the video of the Ramesa Osterk getting abducted. It was very disturbing and it was I'm sure it was an extremely traumatic experience. Even you know, even if they end up letting her go or whatever, it was, just that experience alone can cause long term trauma and it's very, very disturbing.
I failed to mention, you know, when we were writing the script for this show, I didn't add the story that came out yesterday about the l Salvadorian man who was an American. He was here legally. I don't believe he was an American citizen yet. Oh no, he was an American citizen, but he was deported to El Salvador and put in one of the most one of the worst prisons that you could be in. And he was here on political asylum initially because he was in danger
at El Salvador. I mean, and I hear that there's being there's no attempt at trying to get him back, which is a shady.
Is Is he the one that had that already had a judge's order specifically forbidding that he'd be deported.
Yes, yes, so I think I'm wrong on the citizen part. But uh, you know, nonetheless came here for protected underprotected status.
Right you come You're fleeing a dangerous situation, and you know, you hear these stories about America, Land of the Free and home of the brave, and then you get here and then you're kicked out, even though you were here even though you did go through all the proper channels and everything. It's not it's it's it's frustrating.
Helen. Could you expand on that idea a little bit. Are these arrests are they're illegal?
Right?
Is this is an illegal thing happening? If so, how so?
Because you're even if you're here like a on a green card, or you're here as a student, or are you're here under protect a status, you are, you are under law that you can be here in the country legally. You can't be deported, You're you can't be arrested for just having legal status to be in the country.
You know you're not.
And that's the thing.
That's so messed up about this. Like, I'm this is a side example, but my mom is still here on her visa, like she is an immigrant from pullback. Technically she's white, so I don't know how this is going to play out.
And she's old, she could be sick, yeah, I agree, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, but she could technically be deported. You know, if we said, if we're ever going to take this literally, she could be deported. But unfortunately, this is this law is racist as fuck, and I'm sorry, but it is, and they're focusing on the brown people because what happens under fascist governments. You know what happens under fascist governments.
You blame minorities that don't have any power, and you villainize them, you start deporting them, and then when that doesn't, you know, cut the mustard you were moving.
Then we move on to more.
Extreme things that Jimmy alluded to. Now I don't want that to happen, obviously, but this type of crap that's happening. This what happened in other.
Other parts of the world.
You know, in the early to mid twenties century where.
Things got really bad.
Guys, I'm really bad, So I'm again it's kind of really really kind of stop like do protests and you should be doing your best to help your neighbor.
You know.
Again, if your person the privilege, you use your privilege to help somebody else, right, and it's gonna suck. It's not gonna be comfortable, it's gonna suck.
It's kind of like one of those situations where you just can't believe that it's happening.
I mean I kind of feel like like I'm struck.
Like it's just like, really, is this really this, you know, because you imagine it this kind of thing happening, you know, especially when politicians get talking about each other and that kind of thing and they bring up this kind of stuff. But here we are. I mean, it's it's really it's really hard to argue that there's not horrible things happening right now. And it's just it's to the point where people that don't recognize with it. It's almost you almost
think that it must be intentional. It must be you know, intent willful ignorance. Right, Jimmy, I want to go back to you a little bit here. Helen was talking about the arrests and the policy mandating these arrests. Do you and then I just want to get your opinion on this. Do you think this is part of that larger agenda?
Do you think there's ulterior motives here? Do you think this is specifically a racially motivated thing, or do you think it's just a safety issue gone wrong, you know, improperly and and incompetently enacted.
It It's got to be a racial issue because white people are not being rounded up or deported, White people are not being threatened, you know, they might be in other capacities but not because they're white, you know, American citizens, people with protected status, all those people that are being threatened or of Latino heritage period. And so I can't
see this not being a racial issue. In fact, the judge that blocked the move to remove protected status from the I said four hundred thousand Venezuelans earlier, it's actually six hundred said that these this move was being done through a racial justification, and he sees that this is not right, you know, and the rest of us need to see that this is not right. You know, I
think that these are racist justifications. And the point, it's to the point that I'm now looking at our own law enforcement, like I look at the Gestapo in nineteen thirties Germany. I mean, ice, ICE is now a tool for fascist minded people, and you know, it's where the brown coats now, right, yes, right, And so verification of citizen is not citizenship is not even required. They're just
rounding them up. And you know, there was an immense amount of pressure on these law enforcement agencies, particularly the people doing the tactical acquisition of the so called criminals. As there is a pressure on people all across the government. It's why we saw this ridiculous email from our supposed King Musk saying you better justify you'd better justify what you've been doing last week. People are going, oh shit, I don't I think I'm doing a good job. Why
am I being harassed? And so we're seeing ICE agents and federal law enforcement to avoid being targeted and laid off and remove themselves acquiescing to this larger effort, which is wrong. It's flat out wrong.
It's wrong not only for the victims of the crimes, but it's wrong to put people in a position where they have to do that, you know, where their livelihood is at threat and maybe even worse for them, you know, for their situation if they're labeled as you know, a dissenter or a troublemaker or something like that. They're not just going to lose their job, They're going to lose their communities. They're going to lose their you know, in
many cases, their family. And it's it's really tough to put somebody in a situation where you have to do something that you believe is immoral or you know, keep your family fed. It's it's really, I mean, it's it's it's hard to see an upside to this. I mean, obviously there's not, but clearly somebody is at least imagining an upside here. Speaking of that, Helen, I want to go back to you for a second. Here, According to studies cited by NPR, research indicates that immigrants commit less
crimes than US born people. Economists ran A. Breminski of Stanford University found that since nineteen sixties, immigrants are sixty percent less likely to be incarcerated than US born people. They talk, he talks about incarcerations because that's where that's the stage of the process where they look into citizenship status. So immigrants are sixty percent likely to be incarcerated. There's
also a state level research that shows similar results. Researchers at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, looked into Texas in twenty nineteen, so we're back in Texas now. They found that undocumented immigrants were thirty seven point one percent less likely to be convicted of a crime. Beyond incarceration rates. Research also shows that there's no correlation between undocumented people and a rise in crime, rise in a rate of crime. Okay, I'm going to say that again.
There is no correlation between undocumented people and a rise in the crime rate. Recent investigations by The New York Times and the Marshall Project found that between two thousand and seven and twenty sixteen, there was no link between undocumented immigrants and the rise in violent or property crime. So, as we found in earlier segments this week, we have a solution that does seem to address any kind of problem.
I hate to keep going back to the racism trough, but if you have if if it looks like a bigotry and act quacks like a bigotry, it's probably bigotry, right, is it really? Is it really that simple? Is this just flat out racism or could there let's let's try to at least put ourselves in uh in the other perspective, Could there conceivably be some sort of legal or policy objective here, or is it just straight up racism?
It's racism because if they were being honest and they were really looking at you know, you know, looking at this from is there a correlation between illegal immigration and violence? You know, problems with the economy because everybody always complaining about how, you know, immigrants are going to take my job, and you know, on all this type of stuff. No, no, stop it, stop it, sap stab it.
It's racism. It's racism because the.
Only people there paying attention to are having to be people from Latino.
Countries, right yeah, so yeah, exactly, Venezuelan's right.
Reality of it.
That's a pretty big sample size right there.
And so if that is your goal is to blame you know, people that have more melanin than you do and having to you know, come from a different country where they u still at different language than you, and you don't understand their culture because you know, you don't bother to learn anything or you or And the thing is, though, you know, when we're people are disgusted by what they don't understand, and they're discussed by differences, and if you
don't have your critical thinking brain on and being like, you know, this was some you know, psychological priming and bullshit that was fed to me about people that you know are different than me, what you do is you jump to fe I don't understand this, so you jump to fear. You jump to discuss, and what do we want to do with things that discussed us? We want to push it away, don't want anything to do with it.
And then you then you have the right to dehumanize another human being and now recognize that this is going to traumatize them. You aren't fucking up their lives. I'm sorry, I'm swearing. Not this pisses me off like this.
Have done a great job of restraint up to this point so far I would have been I think there's much more swearing.
That's deserved here.
Now we should all be pissed off.
Yes, there is a backlash effect of this too. And let's let's just sit here and think about those people. Okay, Like, let's just say that you are a Hispanic family living in the United States, Okay, and you're a father and mother. You're allowed to stay here with one parent, but your other parent gets deported back to El Salvador, Guatemala, you know Piccolatina country, Right. What does that do to that family?
Yeah? Exactly?
How are they going to feel about the country that they immigrated to looking for a better life to protect their family and a family member gets to poured it back.
You know, the man that was sent to the L Salvador prison. The reason why we know for sure that he's in that prison is because his wife saw footage of that prison on TV covering the story of people being deported to El Salvador and saw him at the prison.
That's disgusting.
Yeah, yeah, that he was able to confirm right there. She didn't know where he was, suspected that he had been deported, but had no idea until she saw on TV that her husband was indeed in El Salvador, in a prison where he's in danger.
Right, yeah, I mean that you would think that would they would at least give her that much, at least just tell him where, tell her where her husband is.
No, it's just gone and disappear.
And just just by happenstance was able to find that information.
That's amazing, that's amazing.
He's not considered a person, He's considered a problem. And that's the thing, because when you humans, she doesn't deserve respect, she doesn't deserve to know where her husband is. Because that's that's what racism does.
This is what fascism dust.
It tells you that certain other people are not people, they're a less than And that's why we're seeing this is why this I'm just so mad because it's so
it's so terrible what it's happening. And I and again, like Scott, you were saying before, like, this is not America, this is un America, this is not the America that I had the idea of what especially coming from a family of immigrants both of my parents, you know, my mom is from Canada and my dad's dad is from Albania, so you know, and so when you have that perspective and you know of that melting pot and you know different people, you know, coming together, it's just heartbreaking that
this is this is happening.
I want to stick on the on the racism idea.
I know it's difficult to talk about, so I really appreciate both of you having this conversation. I think this is I think it's good for people to be able to talk about this kind of thing in a in a relatively safe environment like we are here, especially because there's so many people that don't have that kind of environment where they can have this kind of discussion. So thank you both for that. But Jimmy, I wanted to
ask you. We've talked many many times on the nonprofits on how conservative thought, both politically and religiously is very often tied to and there's tons of studies that show this is correlated to an authoritarian perspective, an authoritarian mindset. And we also know that those who have such an authoritarian mindset are very vulnerable to fear response. Okay, they're they're very They react very strongly to threats and to
and and to fear based situations. Do you think that, I mean, obviously there's horrible racism happening, whether it was intended to be racism, or whether it's even worse racism of indifference. Do you think that this could be there could be some kind of political benefit for taking advantage of this kind of racism. And again, I want to stress I think almost that kind of racism is worse the racism of indifference. They're just playing along with the
racism to get the votes kind of thing. Do you think that there's an aspect of that in the story here?
Sure, I think the hate is being intentionally engineered. I think that it is being created to freeze the status quo, or well, first of all to change it, but now to maintain it. Right. I think that border security and economic problems, even though the economy was good and improving was the may were the major issues that people voted the way that they did, and because it was the it was under the they were under the impression that
immigrants were the problem for a failing economy. But you know what, when you are not educated on how immigrants make any economy work, and how any economy works, and that it's actually in a good spot, better than when the president at the time took office, then you have a tendency to go along with the engineered hate. And I think that that's what's happening. I forget who said it. Boy, we love the uneducated. I doesn't matter who said it.
But you know, it just goes to show you that, you know, having an uneducated mass or base, i should say, and keeping them that way by dismantling education outlets, dismantling the Department of Education and funding to schools right goes along with allowing this blame to be to be propagated, if you will. And so, yeah, I think that while there might not be people that are themselves racist, they're going along with the racism because it helps their position,
their wallet, and their power. And so that's the unfortunate part about it. You know a lot of people have decided that racis is not a red line for them, and that's scary.
Yeah, kind of like that callous indifference is really just not that's not part of a world I want to be in. And speaking of worlds that I'm not in, I want to tie in the religion. Again, we haven't really talked a lot about the original religion in this These stories are just so horrific that it's like half an hour before we can even get to the religion part. But I want to read a few quotes from a
book that I'm sure you're all familiar with. Here, first quote, you shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. That's from Deuteronomy ten nineteen. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you. You shall love the alien as yourself, for you are aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God. That's from Leviticus nineteen thirty four. Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments,
show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor, and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. That's from Zechariah and seven nine through ten. Last one, here, let mutual love continue, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. For doing that, some have entertained, and for by doing that, some have entertained angels without knowing it.
Remember those who are in prison as those who were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you are being tortured yourself. And so, in other words, welcome them as your brothers, welcome them as among yourselves. And that's from Hebrews thirteen to one through three. So the Bible, obviously that was all from is especially relevant here because there's a huge overlap in those who are supporting these immigration policies and those who support the christ
criminal Freian slip there, the Christian nationalist movement. And I'm going to ask this from both of you. Do these people actually read their own book? And why do you think pointing out the Unchristian nature of these policies does nothing to stem the tide of hate. We'll go to Jimmy first and then we'll finish with Helen. Well, they think they read their own book? And why is this not having an effect at large?
Most Christians don't read their own books. Human beings are generally lazy, and if they have somebody standing at the front of their congregation holding the book, telling them, Hey, I read it for you. You know this is what it says. They're probably comfortable doing that. I'm sorry say the second part of your question again, do they read their own goal?
Why does pointing out these things not change anything? If we point to I just listed it was so easy to find those five or six verses. I could have kept going, why does that not change anything?
Because I think that people don't really care. Honestly, they are not willing to trade the position that they're in. Heck, as far as I know, Jesus said to give all your things away to the poor, right, I don't think that we're going to see anybody do that, any any Bible thumping Christian do that. In fact, they're more likely to hoard wealth just like most other people are willing to hoard things is that they they identify essential to their own survival. I don't think that people who claim
to be Christian at large really care. I just think they care about their own well being like most regular people do, and they use this Christian dogma instead as a way to say or to describe us versus them, so that way they can demonize them.
Right, Yeah, Helen, do you have anything to add to that? I know you and I have had a great discussion about lazy thinking. Do you think lazy thinking is contributing to this or do you think you know what?
What?
What do you think is going on? I know that you were a former Catholic there what are your thoughts?
So my kind of feeling is that I'm with they don't they're not reading their book, and or if they are, they're they're picking and choosing what they want to pull out of it like every other religion does. So they they if they read the words, they're like, you know, I don't like that, you know, be kind to your neighbor thing. But I but I like this thing about like, you know, being the right. You know that, I like, you know that I'm going to take I'm going to
take that away, you know, so or be there. As Jamie said, they just need someone to tell them what to do and how to think. And they're not, as you know, they're they're not using their critical thinking skills. It's easier just to go at the flow, do lazy thinking and not do the hard work of going Well, they're telling me this, like these people are.
Bad, but I don't.
But I haven't seen any evidence that these people are bad. You know, I haven't seen anything that's affecting my life.
I saw my job. You know, I'm still pretty comfortable. Like, am I being infested?
Bullshit?
You don't see because even if they question it for two seconds, then another thing that what people don't like is that they'll psychologically protect themselves against things that they don't like about themselves and happy to deal with your internal bias is it's going to make people feel uncomfortable. And instead of doing that, which is look at your bias and examine it for what it fucking is, I'm just gonna blame.
I'm gonna say.
Those people are the bad people, and I am justified in thinking the way that I do.
I agree what a bigger going to do right? Exactly exactly.
Yeah, And you know, we could keep going on for for many many hours here, but I think we need to stop here.
So I want to thank everybody for listening.